JOHN   MITCHELL 


The  Wage  Earner 

and  His  Problems 


By 

JOHN  MITCHELL 


WASHINGTON,  D.  C. 

PUBLISHED  BY  P.  S.  RIDSDALE 

1913 


COPYRIGHT,  1913,  BY 

P.  S.  RIDSDALE 

FOR  JOHN  MITCHELL 


PRINTED  BY 

NATIONAL  CAPITAL  PRESS,  INC. 
WASHINGTON,  D.  C. 


: 
SANTA  BAUUARA 


FOREWORD 

No  one  can  doubt  but  that  the  reading  habit  is 
firmly  established  among  the  American  people. 
We  read  and  we  read — at  home,  on  the  street,  in 
the  street  car,  on  the  train,  in  places  of  work ;  we 
read  as  we  eat,  as  we  talk,  as  we  walk,  as  we  wait. 
Daily  we  consume  tons  and  tons  of  printed  matter. 

This  reading  habit  of  ours  is  of  vital  signifi- 
cance and  effect  in  determining  what  we  are  and 
what  we  would  be.  ,When  first  we  enter  the  world 
of  books  by  the  road  of  the  a,  b,  c's,  we  come  into 
a  wider  and  greater  world  of  realities  and  a  realm 
of  imagery.  Beginning  in  childhood  with  the 
fairy-land  and  the  make-believe,  we  may  go  fur- 
ther and  further  into  the  world  of  books  and 
thought,  and  may  there  find  and  know  men  and 
women — all  that  they  were  or  dreamed,  or  strove 
and  agonized  to  be.  In  that  world  mind  calls 
unto  mind  across  all  ages,  the  great  and  noble  of 
all  times  speak  simply  and  clearly  to  anyone  who 
will  hear,  truths  of  life  and  work,  truths  born 
of  experience  and  wisdom ;  and  yet  do  all  Ameri- 
cans realize  that  this  reading  habit  is  the  talisman 
that  admits  them  to  communion  and  companion- 
ship with  the  immortals  ?  Or  is  the  talisman  pros- 
tituted to  less  worthy  purposes  f 

They  tell  us  that  Americans  read  more  news- 


4  THE  WAGE  EARNEKS 

papers  than  any  other  form  of  literature,  and 
that  periodicals  rank  next  in  popularity.  The 
modern  American  newspaper  is  something  which 
is  generally  looked  upon  as  an  achievement — 
morning  editions,  noon  editions,  evening  editions, 
Sunday  paper,  and  extra  editions  whenever  nec- 
essary to  inform  the  public  of  the  latest  happen- 
ings. These  do  indeed  serve  a  purpose,  and,  as  a 
rule,  serve  it  well.  Daily  they  bring  to  the  read- 
ers, whether  in  the  city  or  in  the  remotest  habita- 
tions, such  happenings  of  the  whole  world  as 
editors  and  reporters  deem  of  greatest  moment. 
They  reflect  the  outward  manifestation  of  the 
sweep  and  scope  of  world  action.  The  papers  and 
the  periodicals  not  only  chronicle  events,  but  com- 
ment on  the  force  and  the  trend  of  related  move- 
ments. Valuable  as  is  the  function  of  this  read- 
ing matter,  yet  it  is,  and  is  intended  to  be,  only 
ephemeral.  It  deals  largely  with  the  superficial 
aspects  and  phases  of  life,  with  that  which  is  sen- 
sational, adventitious  and  abnormal,  and  not  with 
the  underlying,  fundamental  forces  of  life,  thought 
and  action.  Those  whose  reading  is  confined  to 
this  sort  of  material  miss  the  treasures  of  liter- 
ature,— the  great  books  which  tell  of  life  with  its 
suffering  and  its  joy,  its  pain  and  its  hope,  its 
struggles  and  its  visions  of  greater  things  beyond. 
There  are  books  written  in  red  blood,  books  that 
bring  you  close  to  the  throbbing  heart  of  all 
humanity  and  reveal  to  you  the  imperishable  force 


FOREWORD  5 

of  personality,  books  that  bring  you  into  tune  with 
the  music  of  the  universe  and  the  soul-life  and 
purposes  that  shape  and  mold  the  course  of  human 
development.  These  are  the  books  of  inspiration 
and  life,  these  are  what  should  be  read  and  re- 
read, these  are  they  which  live  and  bring  their 
message  to  men  of  all  ages. 

Not  many  of  us  realize  how  much  we  owe  to 
the  books  that  we  read — they  constitute  our  chief 
source  from  which  to  acquire  information. 
Largely  from  what  we  read  we  build  up  our 
mental  world  which  determines  or  is  the  self  and 
the  will  to  action,  we  fashion  our  precepts  and 
concepts,  our  mental  tools  and  our  ideals.  What- 
ever it  is  our  custom  to  read  is  that  which  fixes 
the  tone  of  our  mental  existence,  determines  our 
sympathies  and  our  interpretations  of  men  and 
life. 

Centuries  ago  it  was  written  "of  making 
many  books  there  is  no  end.'*  Today  as  then, 
there  are  books  written  by  the  vain  and  the 
foolish,  by  those  of  little  understanding.  These 
last  but  a  brief  while  and  then  vanish  into  the 
void  of  time.  There  are  others  written  by  men 
who  told  of  things  which  were  lasting  and  funda- 
mental, and  who  dealt  with  bed-rock  truths  and 
the  eternal  verities.  These  were  men  who  had 
been  fired  by  life's  dreams  and  purposes,  whose 
suffering  and  experiences  made  them  more  keenly 
sensitive  to  the  passions  of  humanity.  They  were 


6  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

seers  who  could  interpret  life,  who  could  enrich 
others  by  the  wealth  of  their  experiences  and 
enter  into  every  mind  and  life,  and  inspire  by 
their  coming.  Through  their  books  we  are  granted 
the  privilege  of  communion  with  these  leaders  of 
all  ages,  of  sensing  their  personalities  and  under- 
standing their  characters,  of  grasping  the  mean- 
ing and  import  of  that  imperishable  personality 
which  is  gathered  from  the  forces  of  all  the  ages 
that  have  gone  before,  and  shall  live  in  all  the 
ages  that  are  to  come.  These  are  the  books  that 
shall  live  and  never  die;  they  deal  with  human 
life,  its  depths  and  its  shallows.  Those  which  tell 
of  life,  human  efforts  and  aspirations  are  what 
may  with  profit  constitute  the  reading  matter  of 
all  our  people  that  they  may  understand  and 
appreciate  the  world  in  which  they  live  and  the 
lives  of  all  among  whom  they  dwell  that  the  com- 
mon life  may  be  uplifted  to  a  thing  of  joy  and  un- 
limited development. 

When  we  see  in  the  common  life  the  joy  and  the 
purpose  of  living,  when  all  can  find  there  the 
opportunity  for  the  realization  of  the  best  and  the 
greatest  in  each  individual,  then  there  will  come 
into  the  life  of  the  whole  nation  an  understanding 
that  will  bless  and  glorify  the  work  that  is  done 
by  each  and  all.  A  book  that  interprets  the 
motives  and  the  purpose  of  a  movement  that  meets 
a  vital  human  need,  that  in  familiar  terms  tells  the 


FOREWORD  7 

ignorant,  the  heedless  and  the  isolated,  why  that 
movement  is  what  it  is,  is  a  book  that  will  do  a 
part  in  creating  and  fashioning  the  forces  of  na- 
tional thought  and  action.  Of  such  a  character 
is  this  book  by  John  Mitchell. 

Washington,  D.  C., 

February  21st,  1913. 

SAMUEL  GOMPERS 
President,  American  Federation  of  Labor 


CONTENTS. 
FOBEWOED By  Samuel  Gompers 

CHAPTER                                                              Page 
I.     THE  WAGE  EARNERS  AND  LABOR  ORGAN- 
IZATIONS       11 

II.     THE  WAGE  EARNERS  AND  IMMIGRATION     29 

III.  THE  WAGE  EARNERS  AND  COMPENSA- 

TION FOR  INDUSTRIAL  ACCIDENTS- 42 

IV.  THE  WAGE  EARNERS  AND  INDUSTRIAL 

EFFICIENCY   59 

V.    THE   WAGE    EARNERS   AND   THE   JU- 
DICIARY       74 

VT.     THE  WAGE  EARNERS  AND  THE  MINIMUM 

WAGE  FOR  WOMEN  AND  CHILDREN 90 

VII.     THE  WAGE  EARNERS  AND  THE  TRUSTS.  105 
VIII.     THE  WAGE  EARNERS  AND  UNEMPLOY- 
MENT   117 

IX.    THE    WAGE    EARNERS    AND    PRISON 

LABOR  132 

X.    THE    WAGE     EARNERS — UNION    AND 

NON-UNION   146 

XL    THE  WAGE  EARNERS  AND  THE  SOCIAL 

UPLIFT   158 

XII.     THE   WAGE   EARNERS   AND   THE   EM- 
PLOYERS _  .  172 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE  WAGE  EAKNEBS  AND  LABOR  ORGANIZATIONS. 

In  November  of  each  year,  at  some  one  of  the 
large  cities,  the  convention  of  the  American  Fed- 
eration of  Labor  is  held,  continuing  in  session  for 
about  two  weeks.  The  press  dispatches  from  day 
to  day  relative  to  the  transactions  of  the  delegates 
to  these  conventions  may  be  expected  to  contain 
news  so  varied  in  character,  if  we  are  to  judge  by 
the  past,  that  the  general  reader  will  be  puzzled  by 
them,  or  perhaps  pleased  or  vexed,  accordingly  as 
he  may  be  imperfectly  informed  as  to  what  it  is 
all  about,  or  shall  have  his  prepossessions  con- 
firmed or  his  prejudices  aroused.  Our  friends  the 
reporters  present  will  seize  the  points  which  in 
their  judgment  may  interest  their  respective  news- 
papers. Hence,  in  the  pictures  certain  of  them 
will  paint,  there  may  be, — once  in  a  while, — a  pre- 
ponderance of  black  color,  if  the  taste  of  their 
readers  is  for  black,  and  contrariwise  as  to  white. 
In  either  case,  or  even  when  colorless  news  matter 
is  sent  out  perfunctorily  day  by  day,  the  news- 
paper reports  are  usually  fragmentary.  Besides, 
seeing  a  new  set  of  facts  just  as  they  are,  uncol- 
ored  by  one's  own  eyes,  is  a  point  in  efficiency  not 
always  developed  even  among  observers  drilled  by 
the  most  modern  scientific  reportorial  methods. 


12  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

Hence,  the  reader  is  often  left  uncertain  on  many 
matters  relating  to  convention  legislation  as  well 
as  to  trade  union  aims  and  tendencies. 

For  such  reasons,  on  the  suggestion  of  various 
sympathizers  with  the  truth  for  the  employer  as 
well  as  for  the  wage  earner,  I  am  going  to  offer  in 
these  pages  something  of  fact  and  something  of 
opinion  bearing  on  labor  questions  of  the  day.  I 
may  help  readers  in  general  to  familiarize  them- 
selves with  the  work  of  organized  labor,  not  only 
at  conventions  but  all  the  year  round.  These 
observations  are  not  to  relate  to  any  of  the  purely 
organization  questions  at  present  in  controversy, 
but  rather  to  the  larger  social  problems  which  the 
trade  unions  are  having  their  share  in  trying  to 
solve  and  on  which  the  majority  of  active  union 
men  are  in  accord.  These  discussions  are  not  to 
be  attempts  at  formal  essays  or  treatises,  are  not 
in  the  least  to  be  in  the  form  of  systematized 
statistical  and  doctrinal  statement.  They  are 
merely  to  be  talks,  from  one  citizen  of  our  big 
republic,  on  a  subject  which  he  has  at  heart,  to 
such  of  its  citizens  as  may  care  to  hear  what  he 
has  to  say  thereon. 

First,  then,  as  to  organization.  Union  men,  on 
meeting  people  of  those  branches  of  society  not 
organizable  as  are  wage  earners,  are  frequently 
surprised  at  the  latter 's  want  of  knowledge  of  the 
methods,  forms  and  mechanism  of  trade  unions. 


With  regard  to  labor  organization  they  are  in  the 
mental  state  of  the  boy  who  is  accustomed  to 
seeing  his  mother  frequently  sewing  on  his  but- 
tons, or  the  girl  who  lets  her  mother  do  the 
kitchen  work,  without  further  inquiry.  Children 
sympathize  with  mother,  certainly,  but  they  are 
engrossed  in  their  own  important  affairs  and  let 
her  sweat.  To-day,  perhaps  the  majority  of  our 
people  may  understand  how  a  trade  union  is  put 
together,  held  intact  by  a  system  of  dues  and 
assessments,  and  engineered  by  officers  who  have 
been  instructed  by  the  members  which  way  to 
head.  But  there  is  a  minority,  by  no  means  small, 
who  have  not  mastered  that  elementary  chapter 
in  trade  unionism  and  who  because  of  ignorance 
on  this  point  cannot  see  the  why  or  the  where- 
fore of  much  that  occurs  in  labor  agitation  and 
trade-union  procedure. 

To  summarize  the  major  points  needed  in  the 
instruction  of  anyone  in  this  minority,  I  invite  him 
to  look  with  me  at  the  established  routine  of  the 
proceedings  of  one  of  these  great  congresses  of 
labor.  The  American  Federation  of  Labor  is  an 
organization  of  organizations.  Federated,  it  is  to 
be  noted,  not  amalgamated.  That  is  to  say,  each 
of  its  affiliated  organizations  is  autonomous  with 
respect  to  the  affairs  of  its  own  jurisdiction.  This 
lies  either  within  a  single  occupation  or  within  the 
several  closely  related  occupations  of  an  industry, 


14  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

or,  in  case  of  the  subsidiary  central  union,  within 
a  State  or  a  city. 

Last  year,  in  Rochester,  N.  Y.,  the  convention 
was  made  up  of  355  delegates,  of  whom  231  were 
sent  by  90  national  unions  (or  international,  which 
signifies  that  they  include  Canada),  30  State  Fed- 
erations, 67  city  central  unions,  18  trade  and  fed- 
eral unions,  and  7  fraternal  organizations,  includ- 
ing the  British  Trades  Union  Congress,  the  Cana- 
dian Trades  and  Labor  Congress,  the  National 
Women's  Trade  Union  League,  the  Women's 
International  Union  Label  League,  the  Federal 
Council  of  the  Churches  of  Christ  in  America,  the 
American  Federation  of  Catholic  Societies,  and 
the  Church  Association  for  the  Advancement  of 
Labor. 

The  number  of  votes  allotted  these  various 
classifications,  however,  tells  a  story  not  suggested 
by  the  mere  enumeration  of  the  delegates.  The 
231  national  (and  international)  representatives 
took  17,202  votes  and  all  the  others  only  141. 
This  signifies  that  while  the  Federation  accords 
equality  in  debate  to  all  organizations,  it  rarely 
gives  the  non-international  bodies  an  effective 
voice  on  critical  questions,  when  the  votes  are 
counted.  This  point  is  worth  while  explaining 
here,  because  a  certain  active  political  party  has 
cried  out  to  those  nations  of  the  earth  in  which 
the  workers  as  a  class  are  in  political  revolt  that 


the  American  Federation  of  Labor  is  undemo- 
cratic, and  therefore  tyrannical  and  unjust,  in  its 
apportionment  of  the  voting  power  at  its  conven- 
tions. By  these  representatives,  the  cities  of  New 
York  and  Chicago,  both  with  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  union  members,  have  each  only  a  single 
vote,  while,  for  example,  the  Shingle  Weavers ' 
International  Union,  with  perhaps  a  few  thousand 
members,  has  15  votes,  and  the  Typographical 
Union,  with  fifty-four  thousand  seven  hundred 
members,  has  547  votes.  Truly,  on  first  glance  a 
glaring  anomaly — falling  into  the  class  of  facts 
which  are  important  if  true.  This  is  the  explana- 
tion: All  the  members  of  the  various  unions  of 
New  York,  Chicago,  and  the  other  cities  sending 
delegates  from  their  Central  Labor  Unions,  as 
well  as  all  the  members  of  the  State  Federations, 
are  already  duly  represented  in  the  convention 
through  the  delegates  of  their  respective  national 
(or  international)  unions.  Proof  here,  therefore, 
of  how  a  half  truth  may  be  a  whole  error. 

As  thus  seen,  the  convention  becomes  really  a 
delegate  meeting  of  the  national  (or  international) 
unions,  which,  however,  through  both  generosity 
and  policy,  invite  the  State  and  city  central  organ- 
izations, which  are  made  up  of  members  of  the 
all-encompassing  international  (let  us  call  them) 
bodies,  to  participate  in  that  forum,  school  of 
instruction  in  unionism,  and  common  ground  for 
promoting  acquaintanceship  which  is  termed  a 


16  THE  WAGE  EAENEES 

convention.  In  the  debates,  and  in  the  viva  voce 
voting,  the  State  and  city  delegates  play  an  eqnal 
part  with  the  others,  but  on  a  formal  count  they 
fall  away  quite  to  ciphers.  The  Federation  thus 
permits  the  territorial  organizations  to  contribute 
the  force  of  their  ideas,  but  lodges  in  the  occupa- 
tional organizations  the  power  of  decisive  yea  and 
nay. 

A  feature  of  the  international  unions  is  that 
each  covers  America.  In  the  British  Trades 
Union  Congress  there  may  be  represented  six 
national  unions  of  laborers,  or  two  or  three  of 
hatters,  or  tailors,  every  one  having  its  own  set 
of  officials,  but  under  the  American  Federation 
there  can  be  no  dual  organization — in  city,  State, 
or  nation,  or  of  any  trade  or  calling  whatsoever. 

Attempts  have  been  made  in  America  to  pro- 
mote organization  by  entire  industries — "indus- 
trial organization'* — in  which  distinctly  separated 
crafts  should  be  merged.  The  theory  advanced 
here  is  that  in  case  of  a  strike  "an  injury  to  one 
should  be  the  concern  of  all,"  and  the  query  is 
therefore  put  to  unionists,  "Why  should  only  a 
single  trade  go  on  strike  against  a  corporation, 
perhaps  to  sure  defeat,  whereas  if  all  its  employes 
were  consolidated  into  one  union  they  would  be 
irresistible?" 

The  practice  which  comes  from  experience,  how- 
ever, has  in  the  notable  case  of  the  Typographical 
Union  shown  the  value  of  separating  crafts  in  the 


AND  LABOR  ORGANIZATIONS        17 

printing  industry,  even  after  they  had  once  been 
amalgamated.  In  a  few  other  unions  in  which  the 
unity  of  all  could  be  endangered  by  the  independ- 
ent action  of  a  small  percentage,  as,  for  illustra- 
tion, in  the  United  Mine  Workers  of  America,  the 
cook  is  counted  a  member  of  the  family,  and  all 
men  employed  in  the  mining  industry  are  wisely 
organized  as  members  of  the  same  union.  The 
American  Federation  has  within  a  few  years  set 
up  * '  departments ' ' — of  the  building  trades,  of  the 
metal  trades,  of  several  railway  men's  organiza- 
tions— intended  to  give  recognition  to  whatever  is 
valuable  in  "industrial  unionism." 

An  international  union  is  made  up  of  "local" 
unions  of  its  calling,  each  local  union  covering  a 
town  or  city,  or,  in  cases,  a  district.  Some  of  the 
international  unions  have  four,  five,  or  even  as 
many  as  twenty-five  hundred  local  unions  in  as 
many  places.  Headquarters  of  the  international 
bodies  are  located  to  suit  the  convenience  of  the 
trade.  This  brings  many  of  them  to  the  cities  of 
the  Middle  West.  The  Federation  headquarters 
are  in  Washington. 

The  visitor  who  sits  in  the  gallery  of  the 
convention  hall,  watching  the  proceedings,  soon 
absorbs  a  volume  of  facts  that  corrects  false  im- 
pressions held  by  many  persons  among  the  gen- 
eral public  who  might  through  inquiry  easily  know 
better.  Day  by  day  the  sessions  are  public ;  repre- 
sentatives of  the  press  are  in  constant  attendance, 


18  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

and  the  general  public  is  cordially  invited  to 
witness  the  deliberations  of  the  delegates,  yet 
the  idea  that  they  are  secret  still  lingers  in  the 
minds  of  some  readers  of  daily  papers  who  need 
only  the  word  "labor"  in  a  heading  to  make  them 
skip  on  to  the  next  column.  As  an  evidence  of  the 
gullibility  of  men  who  should  know  better,  it 
might  be  stated  that  some  time  ago  a  detective 
agency  circularized  employers  proposing  to  sell  to 
them  information  concerning  the  daily  proceed- 
ings of  the  American  Federation  of  Labor  conven- 
tion, the  impression  being  conveyed  that  these  ses- 
sions were  held  in  secret  and  the  proceedings 
were  difficult  to  obtain. 

The  reference  to  dues  and  assessments  by  the 
speakers  gives  proof  that  the  number  of  members 
in  the  unions  is  reckoned  by  book  accounts  repre- 
senting dollars  and  cents  paid  in,  and  not  simply 
by  the  number  of  people  who  may  say,  "I  am  a 
trade  unionist,"  as  one  would  say,  "I  am  a  Demo- 
crat." It  costs  hard  cash  to  be  a  union  member, 
while  to  be  an  enthusiastic  shouter  for  a  political 
party  nothing  more  is  needed  than  patriotism. 

The  one  fact  commented  upon  in  the  gallery  is 
usually  the  absence  of  speechifying  on  the  floor. 
Elocution,  spell-binding,  impassioned  appeals  to 
responsive  emotionalism — there  is  little  of  all 
that.  The  big  convention  as  a  machine  moves 
somewhat  slowly.  Every  man  can  have  a  hear- 
ing if  he  gets  down  to  business.  In  fact,  the 


AND  LABOR  ORGANIZATIONS         19 

directness,  simplicity,  and  relevancy  of  the  points 
commonly  made  by  men  taking  the  floor  is  a  dis- 
appointment both  to  observers  who  have  looked 
for  "the  talking  for  one's  constituents"  so  much 
heard  in  legislative  halls  and  to  sentimentalists 
who  yearn  for  burning  words  from  inspired  mis- 
sionaries proclaiming  a  paradise  on  earth  soon 
to  come  through  the  magic  of  a  universal  panacea. 
The  man  in  the  gallery  hears  officers'  annual 
reports  read,  motions  made  and  referred  to  com- 
mittees, and  then  committee  reports  on  these 
motions  debated.  Of  course,  there  are  now  and 
then  brought  up  on  the  platform,  especially  during 
the  early  days,  prominent  men  and  women  who 
have  something  to  say.  If  any  of  these  froth,  they 
discover  their  error.  The  delegates  are  cordial, 
but  being  mostly  "old  stagers"  themselves,  they 
know  substance  from  slather.  The  fraternal  dele- 
gates— trade  unionists  from  Great  Britain  and 
Canada,  clergymen  representing  various  denom- 
inations, farmers  from  the  national  agricultural 
organizations,  women  from  the  international 
leagues — are  heard  with  special  attention.  What 
each  of  them  has  to  say  marks  off  the  advance 
made  for  trade  unionism  in  some  direction  in 
American  society  or  in  some  other  part  of  the 
world.  All  attempts  to  commit  the  Federation  to 
partisan  politics  the  delegates  watch  narrowly.  It 
dawns  upon  the  spectator  at  length  that  among 
the  delegates  a  sufficient  number  have  had  expe- 


20  THE  WAGE  EAENEES 

rience  with  all  the  social  movements  that  have  had 
their  day,  or  are  now  affecting  the  public,  to  pre- 
vent trade  unionism  leaving  its  own  track  and 
switching  off  on  other  roads.  The  spectator  also 
perceives  that  the  trade  union  principles  and 
policies  of  this  country  are  pretty  well  settled. 
There  is  not  very  much  probability  of  sudden 
change  in  them  soon.  The  faith  of  the  delegates 
is  seen  to  be  in  the  movement  itself  and  as  a 
whole.  They  are  not  awaiting  the  sky-rocket  rise 
and  marvelous  achievements  of  a  Napoleonic 
leader  with  a  new  sociological  invention  to  work 
wonders  for  the  wage  earners.  They  are  here  in 
a  practical  turn  of  mind,  patiently  engaged  in  a 
piece  of  business.  Have  they  sentiment!  Aye, 
in  its  place.  Hope?  Certainly,  to  its  definite 
limits.  Idealism?  Truly,  as  toned  down  to  expe- 
rience. But  emotional  inspirations  to  action  are 
rarely  worked  up  on  the  convention  floor.  An 
assumption  that  governs  the  speakers  is  that  their 
fellow-delegates  have  all  passed  through  the  pri- 
mary stages  of  "conviction,"  "conversion," 
"change  of  heart  from  sin,"  and  "determination 
to  live  up  to  bounden  duty. ' '  Therefore  the  argu- 
ments are  mostly  musterings  of  fact  germane  to 
the  pending  question.  Now  and  again,  naturally, 
a  misplaced  reformer  declares  his  radicalism,  or 
a  fresh  recruit  displays  his  awkwardness  in  the 
drill,  or  a  brashy  youth  talks  as  wildly  as  a  one- 
term  member  of  a  legislature,  but  toward  the  per- 


formances  of  these  irregulars  the  attitude  of  the 
convention  is  that  of  the  giant  to  the  child.  There 
may  be  a  wave  of  amused  laughter,  and  the  inci- 
dent is  over. 

The  gallery  spectator  may  have  the  usual  run 
of  initial  inquiries  regarding  trade  unionism 
answered  in  the  development  of  the  proceedings 
on  the  floor.  Why,  he  will  ask,  organized  labor? 

Why  organized  labor?  After  two  days  in  the 
gallery,  the  spectator  may  well  be  inclined  to  ask, 
Why  not  organized  labor?  In  the  absence  of  the 
union,  who  could  speak  with  any  force  to  the  indi- 
vidual employer  or  the  employing  class  on  behalf 
of  the  employed,  as  these  delegates  do  by  reason 
of  their  office?  Who  could  render  labor  laws 
effective  ?  Who  could  ever  present  the  complaints 
of  the  non-unionists,  either  to  employers  or 
society?  Who  could  tell  the  world  that  there  is 
a  labor  question?  In  the  statements  of  delegates, 
from  any  of  the  occupations  represented  in  the 
convention,  made  not  necessarily  for  justification 
of  unionism,  but  rather  in  explaining  every-day 
work,  is  convincing  testimony  that  in  the  conduct 
of  industry  in  general  labor  is  treated  as  a  com- 
modity in  the  market.  The  item  of  " labor"  in 
the  bookkeeping  of  an  employer  runs  along  in  the 
column  with  the  items  of  raw  materials  or  other 
supplies.  All  things  equal,  the  business  man  buys 
in  the  cheapest  market.  He  exercises  his  choice  in 
buying  from  one  dealer  or  another  in  coal  or  ore, 


22  THE  WAGE  EAENERS 

lumber  or  leather.  Similarly,  he  plays  off  labor 
against  labor — the  stock  of  unemployed  labor 
against  his  own  employed  labor.  Notwithstand- 
ing the  waste  of  this  process,  as  a  general  thing 
the  dealers  in  materials  survive  through  their 
foresight,  management,  judgment  of  the  average 
market  prices,  and  their  being  able  to  wait.  But 
the  wage  worker,  as  a  seller  of  labor,  usually  can- 
not wait.  Standing  alone,  his  labor  is  usually  on 
a  forced  market,  he  competes  for  employment 
with  his  fellows,  his  wages  tend  to  fall,  and  if  the 
conditions  under  which  he  works  are  bad  he  can- 
not afford  to  remonstrate.  In  this  situation,  where 
can  he  find  succor?  In  reply  to  this  question  the 
genius  of  this  age  has  offered  two  solutions.  The 
first  is,  to  reform  or  revolutionize  social  condi- 
tions. Unhappily,  the  multiplicity  of  doctors  and 
doctrines  in  the  offer  of  this  solution  baffle  the 
masses.  "Put  me  in  office,"  the  doctors  say,  "so 
that  I  may  compel  society  to  take  my  medicine." 
Verily,  the  result,  thus  far,  has  not  remedied  that 
defect  in  the  labor  market  whereby  the  excess  of 
the  seekers  for  work  over  places  for  them  puts  in 
jeopardy  the  security  of  the  wage  earners  at  work. 
Clearly,  then,  the  workers  must  try  the  other  solu- 
tion, which  modern  times  have  developed — the 
mastering  of  the  labor  market  by  the  wage 
workers  managing  the  sale  of  their  labor  in  com- 
bination. The  New  York  Labor  Bureau  reports 
from  year  to  year  six  per  cent,  or  three,  or  per- 


AND  LABOR  ORGANIZATIONS         23 

haps  eight,  of  the  organized  workers  as  unem- 
ployed. When  insured  by  the  solidarity  of  their 
labor  organizations  against  low  wages  when  their 
time  shall  come  to  get  work,  the  idle  union  mem- 
bers refuse  to  sell  their  labor  in  the  market  at  the 
buyers'  first  bid.  Besides,  in  a  progressive 
degree,  the  years  see  the  trade  union  membership 
insured  also  against  sickness,  accident,  death,  and 
unemployment.  Further,  the  union  not  only 
enforces  the  making  of  law  prescribing  conditions 
conservative  of  the  health  and  comfort  of  the 
workers,  but  injects  life  into  such  laws.  That  all 
these  statements  are  facts  not  to  be  contradicted, 
affecting  intimately  and  vitally  the  daily  existence 
of  the  toilers  and  that,  awaiting  the  dawn  of  the 
millennium,  they  describe  the  practical  solution  of 
the  immediate  problems  of  the  wage  system, 
enters  the  mind  of  the  spectator  who  sits,  with  the 
judgment  of  a  juryman,  in  the  convention  gallery. 

Once  convinced  that  some  kind  of  a  wage 
earners'  union  is  today  essential,  the  interested 
inquirer  may  have  two  subsequent  questions 
answered  the  more  easily. 

Why  the  present  form  of  organization?  Time 
has  worked  it  out.  It  is  not  secret,  with  rites  of 
initiation,  regalia,  grips,  signs  and  sounding  titles 
for  officials,  and  foretokenage  of  social  transfor- 
mation, for  the  reason  that,  by  the  present  gener- 
ation of  workers,  mystery,  symbolism,  stage 
heroics,  and  lodge-room  theatricals  are  not 


24  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

regarded  as  appropriate  to  the  directness  of  the 
character  of  trade  unionism.  Today's  trade 
unionists  are  through  with  the  lost  motions  which 
took  up  the  time  of  their  fathers  in  the  noble  and 
holy  orders  of  knighthood  that  were  wrecked  on 
wind-mills.  They  want  in  their  prosaic  daily  work 
of  dealing  with  employers  no  aid  from  tinseled  and 
gowned  prestidigitateurs  juggling  tinted  glass 
globes.  They  are  accustomed  to  seeing  a  solid 
leather-covered  ball  flying  straight  from  pitcher 
to  batter  and  thence,  whack,  to  the  field,  all  in  the 
open.  From  the  little  local  union  to  the  American 
Federation  of  Labor  the  pyramid  of  organization 
is  simple,  symmetrical,  solid — parts  of  a  well- 
planned  machine,  constructed  for  smooth-running, 
co-operative  work. 

Why  not  in  politics?  Well,  which  party?  A 
new  party?  Or  one  of  the  old  parties?  Political 
action  requires  unity  upon  demands  sufficiently 
important  to  induce  men  to  break  their  usual 
party  connections.  Up  to  the  present,  trade 
unionists  have  not  reached  agreement  on  prob- 
lematical social  remedies  only  remotely  possible 
of  application.  As  for  projects  falling  within  the 
limits  of  practicability,  they  exert  a  force  favor- 
able to  the  working-classes.  That  the  labor  laws 
now  on  the  statute  books  are  there  through  union 
effort  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  in  States  where 
labor  organization  is  weak  the  laws  are  few  or 
quite  a  dead  letter,  labor  bureaus  are  non-existent 


AND  LABOR  ORGANIZATIONS         25 

or  feeble,  and  legislators  are  not  well  convinced 
by  labor  committees  that  labor  has  a  big  vote  and 
wants  at  least  a  small  voice  in  legislation.  How- 
ever sad  it  may  be  to  contemplate  the  masses  not 
ruling,  as  they  should  in  their  majority,  the  un- 
budgeable  fact  stands  that  they,  like  the  pro- 
fessors of  economics,  the  statesmen  who  impose 
tariffs,  the  idealists  who  construct  Utopias,  do  not 
agree  on  how  and  what  to  rule. 

Why  strike  ?  Otherwise,  the  reply  must  be,  the 
question  of  mastery  of  the  market  cannot  be  com- 
pletely settled.  Why  boycott?  When  the  workers 
shall  be  the  only  offending  party  in  this  regard, 
they  alone  may  be  called  upon  to  defend  the  pro- 
cedure. But  practice  of  the  boycott  is  common  to 
all  groups  of  society.  Why  violence  in  the  case 
of  strikes?  We  tell  you  that  unionists  are  rarely 
as  violent  as  are  non-unionists,  that  oganization 
generally  develops  discipline,  that  an  unorganized 
community  is  less  lawful  during  labor  disputes 
than  one  in  which  the  unions  are  strong.  Why 
refuse  to  work  with  the  non-unionist?  Because 
he  offers  a  standing  low  bid  for  a  job  to  the  buyer 
of  labor — if  for  no  other  reason. 

So  run  the  usual  questions,  and  so  the  replies. 
The  one  and  the  other  have  formed  the  basis  of 
volumes.  Only  an  index  to  them  can  be  outlined 
here. 

The  reader  has  in  these  lines  been  invited  as  a 
spectator  to  the  convention  gallery.  He  has  had 


26  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

described  to  him  the  body  of  labor  delegates  as 
one  sitting  with  them  has  for  years  seen  them. 
He  has  observed  them  at  their  task  of  legislating 
for  the  membership  of  the  Federation  in  matters 
lying  beyond  the  jurisdiction  of  the  various 
separate  unions.  He  has  learned  that  the  labor 
organization  is  a  great  modern  institution,  as  last- 
ing as  the  social  conditions  by  which  it  has  been 
produced.  Its  attitude  toward  other  institutions 
of  the  time,  its  policies  and  practices,  its  future — 
these  are  topics  with  which  I  shall  attempt  to  deal 
in  subsequent  chapters. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE  WAGE  EARNERS  AND  IMMIGRATION. 

The  spectator  in  the  gallery  who  follows  the 
proceedings  of  a  convention  of  the  American  Fed- 
eration of  Labor,  or  any  of  the  great  national  or 
international  trade  unions,  thus  obtaining  from 
the  discussions  direct  information  on  live  labor 
problems,  has  opportunity  for  hearing  first-hand 
testimony  as  to  some  of  the  far-reaching  economic 
effects  of  immigration. 

This  subject,  he  may  observe,  on  mentally  look- 
ing back  over  the  debates  when  the  convention  is 
ended,  has  been  treated  by  the  delegates  as  first 
of  all  a  wage  earners'  question.  At  the  present 
time  the  incoming  millions  from  Europe  do  not  by 
any  means  enter  at  once  into  the  various  levels  of 
the  American  industries  and  professions.  Their 
America  is  our  labor  market,  in  fact  almost  invar- 
iably our  unskilled  labor  market.  They  do  not 
start  in  buying  a  business,  taking  up  a  farm,  or 
selecting  a  location  where  they  may  practice  as 
lawyer,  doctor,  minister,  or  writer.  From  the 
newly  arrived  immigrants,  therefore,  the  man- 
agers of  affairs,  the  leaders  in  commercial  life, 
the  politicians  and  lawmakers,  the  editorial  fra- 
ternity, the  landowners,  all  are  in  no  immediate 
danger  of  competition.  Hence  these  classes  but 


28  THE  WAGE  EAENEBS 

remotely  feel  any  of  the  effects  of  immigration 
other  than  such  as  are  apparently  beneficial  to 
themselves  through  the  cheapness  of  labor  and  the 
submissiveness  of  the  laborers.  It  is  otherwise 
with  the  wage  worker.  The  sole  avenue  of 
entrance  to  America  for  perhaps  ninety-nine  per 
cent,  of  the  immigrants  being  through  the  un- 
skilled labor  market,  this,  to  wage  earners,  is  the 
fact  of  all  facts  relative  to  immigration.  This 
truth  sets  aside  as  irrelevant  and  misleading  the 
mere  statistician's  consideration  that  in  propor- 
tion to  population  a  million  and  a  quarter  of  immi- 
grants in  1910  is  less  than  the  427,000  of  1854. 
Sixty  years  ago,  fifty,  forty — yes,  thirty — years 
ago  the  main  volume  of  immigration  poured  west- 
ward. In  that  direction  lay  the  open  land — oppor- 
tunity. Moreover,  only  once  in  the  succeeding 
twenty  years  was  the  tide  of  1854  equaled.  At 
one  time  it  fell  to  one-sixth  of  that  year,  and 
usually  it  was  less  than  one-half.  But  for  nearly 
a  decade  now  the  gross  arrivals  yearly  have  aver- 
aged a  million. 

The  wage  workers  of  America  know  full  well 
that  "opportunity"  in  the  old  sense  of  the  public 
lands  no  longer  exists  in  this  country.  They  know 
that  the  immigrants  now  coming  are  not  on  arrival 
so  fully  qualified  to  be  Americans,  to  be  independ- 
ent wage  earners  to  be  soon  candidates  for  every 
walk  of  our  national  life,  as  were  the  immigrants 
generally  even  so  late  as  twenty  years  ago.  They 


AND  IMMIGRATION  29 

are  less  qualified  through  their  illiteracy,  their 
speaking  languages  not  akin  to  English,  their 
undevelopment  in  the  skilled  trades,  their  tradi- 
tions of  dependence  upon  masters  and  paternal 
institutions,  through  even  their  methods  of  work. 
They  must  begin  building  themselves  up  as  citi- 
zens with  little  more  foundation  than  their  bodily 
strength.  If  the  true  definition  of  *  *  an  American ' ' 
is  "one  who  is  the  product  of  American  institu- 
tions," our  old-time  immigrants  were  generally 
familiar  in  their  home  countries  with  a  goodly 
part  of  those  institutions,  especially  their  spirit, 
while  the  present-day  immigrants  have  usually 
toward  them  merely  the  position  of  untaught  chil- 
dren handicapped  by  the  temporary  deafness  and 
dumbness  of  not  understanding  the  English 
language. 

The  spectator  may  learn  from  his  seat  in  the 
gallery  the  attitude  of  the  delegates  on  the  immi- 
gration question.  It  is  a  logical  attitude  with 
reference  to  events.  It  is  shown,  not  so  much  in 
the  discussions  of  immigration  in  itself,  as  in 
statements  made  regarding  the  pressure  of  the 
freshly  arrived  immigrants  into  the  fields  of  com- 
petition in  the  various  occupations.  A  point  to 
be  noticed  is  the  absence  of  prejudice  against  the 
immigrants ;  the  adverse  judgment  pronounced  is 
upon  the  men  who  bring  them  here.  The  note  that 
is  sounded  most  frequently  in  the  words  of  the 


30  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

speakers  is  sympathy  with  the  immigrants  in  their 
poverty  and  helplessness. 

A  majority  of  the  delegates,  if  not  themselves 
foreign  born,  are  the  sons  or  grandsons  of  men 
who  crossed  the  sea  to  get  to  this  country.  Most 
numerous  and  active  are  those  having  Irish 
names.  Next  come  Germans.  Then  men  of  other 
northern  European  nationalities.  Delegates  of 
the  Latin  races  are  making  their  appearance  in 
recent  years.  The  English  names  common  to  that 
part  of  the  American  population  which  predomi- 
nated in  this  country  to  so  great  an  extent  prior 
to  1850  are  rare.  These  facts  in  themselves  reveal 
certain  social  developments.  The  old  families  of 
New  England,  the  Middle  and  the  Middle  Western 
States  now  put  comparatively  few  of  their  sons 
at  a  trade.  Those  old  families  were  on  the  spot 
when  the  cream  of  the  country  was  to  be  taken 
for  the  gathering.  Rough  work  hence  gradually 
went  out  of  fashion  with  them.  To-day  the  well- 
off  among  them  give  their  poor  relations  the  gen- 
teel indoor  jobs,  which  enable  the  holders  at  least 
to  get  along,  many  of  them  holding  aloof  from 
the  wage-working  classes.  The  Irish-American 
wage  earners  have  two  prominent  characteristics ; 
among  the  most  skilful  of  mechanics,  they  are  ever 
sent  to  the  front  as  standard  bearers  for  their 
fellow- workmen.  In  certain  of  the  out-door  trades, 
such  as  railroading  and  the  erection  of  build- 
ings, men  of  Irish- American  blood  are  in  a  large 


AND  IMMIGRATION  31 

majority,  a  fact  significant  of  racial  hardihood. 
Germans  or  German-Americans  come  out  strong 
as  brewers,  bakers,  cigarmakers,  garment  cutters, 
butchers,  tailors — callings  in  general  requiring 
patience,  study  and  persistence,  or  to  be  traced  to 
a  training  in  their  home  land. 

The  complaints  of  the  inroads  of  the  ever- 
arriving  immigrants  on  their  labor  markets  come 
from  the  men  of  lesser  skill  among  the  miners, 
metal  workers,  street  laborers,  or  in  the  building 
trades,  although  some  of  the  indoor  workers  such 
as  those  employed  in  the  textile  industry  and  the 
garment  trades,  in  both  of  which  a  very  large  per- 
centage of  the  wage  earners  are  foreign  born, 
suffer  in  their  unionism — which  means  their  scale 
of  wages  and  other  union  conditions — through  the 
competition  of  the  multitudinous  hungry  and 
humble  strangers  who,  once  here,  must  get  their 
living  here. 

These  points  are  plainly  made  in  the  testimony 
of  delegates  representing  occupations  in  which  the 
new  immigrants  have  displaced,  or  are  displacing, 
those  who  have  been  here  long  enough  to  sniff 
liberty  and  aspire  to  American  standards,  who 
themselves  only  a  few  years  ago  displaced  Ameri- 
cans or  Europeans  of  other  races  than  their  own. 
As  such  delegates,  standing  on  the  floor  of  the 
convention,  describe  conditions  among  the  unor- 
ganized immigrants  who  are  crowding  out  the 
organized  in  their  occupations,  or  privately 


32  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

between  sessions  give  information  on  the  subject 
from  experience  covering  many  parts  of  the 
country,  the  inquiring  visitor  is  impressed  that 
here  he  is  face  to  face  with  the  immigration  prob- 
lem in  its  vitally  important  social  phase — that  of 
its  direct  results  upon  America  as  the  land  of  the 
independent  wage-working  citizen,  to  whom  all  the 
possibilities  of  a  high  civilization  should  remain 
open. 

The  delegates  of  the  occupations  most  closely 
interested  can  with  truth  tell  the  inquirer  that, 
simply  through  the  inability  of  the  helpless, 
ignorant,  newly-arrived  immigrants,  our  laws  pro- 
tective of  life  and  health  are  frequently  a  dead 
letter,  in  mine  or  manufactory,  among  the  trans- 
port workers  or  the  building  trades  men.  Upon 
the  labor  unions  falls  mainly  the  burden  of 
enforcing  protective  enactments,  a  fact  true  in  Eu- 
rope as  well  as  in  this  country.  Where  the  unions 
are  weak,  the  mere  maintenance  of  their  scale  of 
wages  requiring  most  of  their  energies,  these  laws 
are  often  neglected,  and  where  no  unions  exist 
they  pass  to  nothingness.  It  is  a  certainty  that 
where  factory  girls  are  burned  to  death  by  the 
score  or  the  lives  of  miners  are  lost  by  the  hun- 
dreds, the  question  may  be  asked:  Why  were 
they  not  duly  protected  by  the  existing  laws  ?  And 
the  answer  is  quite  sure  to  be :  Because  the  union 
was  not  strong  enough  to  cope  with  a  law-break- 
ing employer.  Where  there  are  no  unions,  vig- 


AND  IMMIGRATION  33 

ilant  and  systematic  defense  of  the  workers  is 
well-nigh  at  an  end. 

Poverty  is  the  weakness,  the  undoing  of  the 
poor,  ever  the  one  ample  explanation  for  their 
defenselessness.  How  numerous  are  the  poor, 
how  their  deprivations  at  times  unman  them, 
how  unrequited  their  labors,  how  heroic  their 
struggles  can  be  told  by  the  labor  repre- 
sentatives, speaking  for  their  own  callings 
at  a  convention.  Begin  with  the  bakers.  Why  are 
bakers  in  New  York  forever  striking?  A  decade 
ago,  twenty  years  ago,  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago 
New  York  striking  bakers  put  up  their  plea  to  the 
State  lawgivers,  invoked  public  opinion  in  their 
favor,  called  upon  organized  labor  for  help,  some 
union  members  even  committed  acts  of  violence 
that  they  might  be  jailed  as  martyrs  in  the  hope  of 
making  known  the  necessity  of  improving  condi- 
tions in  the  baking  industry.  Yet  today  in  the 
New  York  cellar  bakeries  still  toils  poverty  in 
mortal  pain.  It  took  thirty  years  of  agitation  to 
obtain  a  few  effective  statutes  governing  bakery 
sanitation,  passed  only  a  few  years  ago.  How 
long  are  these  laws  to  be  enforced?  The  employ- 
ing bakers  carried  the  bake-shop  ten-hour  law  up 
to  the  United  States  Supreme  Court  to  have  it 
declared  unconstitutional,  and  succeeded.  Within 
the  past  two  years  New  York  journeymen  bakers 
in  large  numbers  were  striking  against  working 
unlimited  hours  and  against  compulsory  boarding 


34  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

in  the  shop — in  the  dark  over-heated  and  inade- 
quately ventilated  underground  bake-room  in 
which  they  worked.  "Withal,  their  wages  were 
among  the  lowest.  The  bakers '  unions  are  difficult 
to  maintain ;  the  better  conditions  gained  through 
successful  strikes  alternate  with  the  worse  condi- 
tions thereafter  gradually  enforced  by  employers. 
Why  this  state  of  things  in  the  baking  trade? 
Poverty,  of  course.  The  poverty  of  the  penniless, 
hungry  immigrant  of  today  competing  with  the 
but  slightly  less  pitiable  poverty  of  the  toilsome 
immigrant  of  yesterday,  engaged  in  the  task  of 
Sisyphus — his  merely  elementary  needs  forming 
both  the  hill  to  be  overcome  and  the  stone  that  he 
fails  to  get  to  the  top. 

The  reservoir  of  labor  on  which  the  bakery 
employers  make  constant  drafts  is  the  mass  of 
unemployed  in  New  York,  continually  fed  by  the 
stream  of  immigrants  arriving  from  Europe.  As 
with  the  baking,  so  with  the  clothing  industry. 
For  years  in  every  strike  lost  by  the  garment 
workers  or  lockout  won  by  their  employers,  the 
determining  factor  has  been  the  shiploads  of 
people  arriving  at  the  landing  place  at  the  Battery, 
with  less  per  head  in  their  pockets  than  two  weeks' 
purchase  on  life.  About  seven  years  ago,  conse- 
quently, the  executive  board  of  the  garment 
workers'  union,  themselves  nearly  all  foreign 
born,  passed  resolutions  calling  for  restricted 
immigration. 


AND  IMMIGRATION  35 

If  an  examination  be  made  of  one  occupation 
after  another  in  New  York,  it  will  be  found  that 
in  all  those  which,  like  baking  and  garment  mak- 
ing, may  be  followed  in  this  country  by  persons 
not  speaking  English,  the  immediate  cause  of  dire 
poverty  is  unemployment.  This  simply  means 
that  the  arriving  immigrants  are  not  needed  in 
the  labor  market,  except  to  be  used  by  employers 
in  enforced  competition  with  the  wage-earners 
already  here. 

But,  it  will  be  asked,  is  really  the  encom- 
passing direct  cause  of  dependent  poverty  today 
in  America  unemployment?  Eecent  reports  are: 
The  cases  of  5,000  families  applying  to  the  Charity 
Organization  Society  for  aid  being  duly  recorded 
with  reference  to  the  sources  of  deprivation,  ten 
specific  causes  were  set  down  as  those  to  which 
disability  to  make  a  living  were  attributable.  In 
more  than  69  per  cent,  a  factor  was  unemploy- 
ment, though,  naturally,  associated  with  other 
factors — chronic  physical  ailments,  widowhood, 
etc.  Intemperance  was  a  concomitant  in  less  than 
17  per  cent,  of  all  these  cases.  In  4,325  families 
applying  to  the  United  Hebrew  Charities  for  aid, 
there  were  1,348  cases  of  unemployment  on  the 
part  of  the  bread-winners.  Of  62,851  unoccupied 
members  of  labor  unions  in  the  State  of  New 
York  at  the  end  of  March,  1910,  42,010  were  out 
because  of  lack  of  employment.  The  State  Com- 
mission on  unemployment  reports  that  the  records 


36  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

of  charitable  organizations  show  that  a  large  pro- 
portion of  cases  of  destitution  is  due  primarily  to 
lack  of  work.  The  Bowery  Mission  in  two  and 
one-half  years  found  work  for  only  9,000  out  of 
about  40,000  applicants;  the  National  Employ- 
ment Exchange  in  1910  for  only  4,600  out  of  24,600 
applicants;  the  Division  of  Information,  United 
States  Bureau  of  Immigration,  only  3,812  out  of 
24,000. 

There  may  have  been  a  time  when  New  York 
statistics  for  unemployment  were  not  accurately 
suggestive  as  a  gauge  for  the  country  as  a  whole. 
But  the  investigator,  as  a  preliminary  step,  might 
profitably  inquire  in  November  at  a  convention  of 
the  American  Federation  of  Labor  as  to  whether 
the  delegates  can  give  evidence  that  New  York 
conditions  in  this  respect  are  typical  or  not  for  the 
industrial  centers  in  general  of  the  United  States 
today.  What  would  necessarily  be  the  reply  of 
the  miners,  the  steel  workers,  the  building  trades 
laborers,  the  freight  handlers,  the  railroad  main- 
tenance of  way  employes,  the  seamen,  the  labor- 
ers for  roadway  and  similar  contractors?  What 
the  reply  of  the  indoor  occupations — the  needle 
workers,  the  mill  operatives,  the  light  metal  shop 
hands,  the  factory  workers  in  a  score  of  national 
industries  T  The  answer  is  to  be  found  in  the  long 
contested  strikes  of  the  last  few  years.  The  mere 
mention  of  geographical  names  calls  up  heart- 
rending accounts  of  the  sufferings  of  wage  earners 


AND  IMMIGRATION  37 

who  have  had  their  bitter  choice  between  uncom- 
plaining insufficiency  while  at  work  and  desperate 
straits  while  on  strike — Westmoreland  county  and 
Bethlehem,  Pennsylvania;  Grand  Kapids,  Michi- 
gan; the  mining  fields  of  West  Virginia.  Every 
year  New  York  and  Chicago  and  other  large  cities 
show  the  possibilities  of  labor  disputes  involving 
men  and  women  by  the  tens  of  thousands.  With 
the  successive  investigations  of  labor  conditions, 
by  the  unions,  by  labor  bureaus,  by  social  workers, 
the  industrial  and  mining  centers  of  the  country 
are  seen  to  present  the  same  general  features  of 
masses  of  immigrant  workmen,  employed  and 
unemployed,  at  times  weakening  trade  unions 
through  competition,  at  times,  whether  organized 
or  unorganized,  breaking  out  in  strikes,  and 
astonishing  the  public  with  their  recklessness,  or 
their  stubborn  resistance,  or  their  patient,  dogged 
suffering. 

The  rapidity  with  which  the  new  immigrant  is 
penetrating  classes  of  workmen  other  than  those 
ranking  lowest  in  skill,  into  which  he  usually 
enters  on  arriving  in  America,  is  becoming 
noticeable.  The  youth  five  years  in  this  country, 
learning  with  his  English  some  of  the  ways  of 
young  America,  makes  for  a  better  paying  grade 
of  work  than  his  father's.  The  little  boy  or  girl 
of  ten  years  of  age  on  arrival  is  in  four  years 
legally  a  factory  hand.  The  control  of  the  market 
for  rough  labor  by  the  new  immigration  is  thus 


38  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

followed  by  a  pressure  upon  higher  forms  of  work 
that  Americans  or  the  older  immigrants  and  their 
sons  have  assumed  must  remain  their  own.  Ele- 
vator and  hotel  boys,  street  car  conductors,  musi- 
cians, skilled  building  trades  workmen,  salesmen, 
semi-skilled  benchmen  in  workshops — the  physiog- 
nomies of  these  classes  of  work-people  no  longer  in- 
variably suggest  American  or  northern  European 
birthplaces.  The  possibilities  of  the  competition 
embodied  in  the  unparalleled  migration  of  the 
European  masses  to  America  is  beginning  to  be 
keenly  felt  in  the  ranks  of  the  lesser  commercial 
men  and  even  in  the  professions  in  parts  of  the 
country  which  a  few  years  ago  had  not  been  made 
aware  of  an  immigration  question.  The  self-con- 
tained established  small  gentry  who  composedly 
moved  along  in  fancied  security  in  their  several 
genteel  occupations  are  awakening  to  economic 
troubles  of  their  own.  They  are  finding  out  what 
competition  for  opportunity  to  gain  a  livelihood 
for  small  capitalists  and  propertyless  men  of  lib- 
eral education  means  and  are  learning  that  all 
social  problems  are  not  to  be  settled  by  shrewd- 
ness or  shirking  in  dealing  with  questions  of  mar- 
riage and  the  family. 

While  the  movement  of  the  new  immigrant  and 
his  quickly  assimilated  children  upward  in  the 
hierarchy  of  occupations  is  thus  proceeding  apace, 
his  spread  in  masses  over  the  area  of  the  country 
in  the  last  few  years  has  been  marvelous.  A  recent 


AND  IMMIGRATION  39 

study  in  labor  circles  of  this  phase  of  the  immigra- 
tion problem  has  brought  before  the  public  the 
picture  of  a  network  of  variously  named  agencies 
having  in  view  finding  work  for  immigrants  and 
assisting  them  to  any  point  in  the  United  States 
where  it  is  to  be  had.  No  similar  aid  exists  for 
American  workmen.  The  headquarters  of  these 
agencies  invariably  connect  with  points  close  to 
the  landing  place  of  the  immigrants  in  New  York. 
Blind  indeed  must  be  the  investigator  on  this  sub- 
ject who  cannot  or  will  not  see  the  power  of  the 
steamship  lines  behind  the  work  being  carried  on 
so  extensively  by  some  of  these  agencies  to  take 
care  of  the  arriving  immigrants. 

All  these  facts  bearing  on  the  subject  of  immi- 
gration have  come  home  to  many  of  the  delegates 
to  the  convention  of  the  American  Federation  of 
Labor.  Probably  not  one  of  them,  and  indeed 
not  one  prominent  labor  man  in  the  entire  country, 
but  has  passed  through  the  same  series  of  impres- 
sions and  sentiments  regarding  immigration. 
Where  once  was  acquiescence,  if  not  approval, 
there  is  now  opposition.  Labor's  sympathy  with 
labor  reaches  from  America  to  Europe.  Pity,  a 
desire  to  help,  hope  for  a  better  future  for  all 
labor,  a  faith  in  human  nature  in  its  lowliest  estate 
— these  are  sentiments  usually  aroused  in  the 
breast  of  the  American  workingman  in  contem- 
plating the  hard  fate  of  his  brother  in  Europe. 
Aye,  and  on  that  string  has  the  cunning  hand  of 


40  THE  WAGE  EAENEES 

master  manipulators  of  labor  long  played.  Great 
wealth  has  been  absorbed  by  the  steamship  lines 
carrying  the  millions  of  immigrants  to  America; 
great  wealth  is  being  produced  by  the  help  of 
the  immigrants  for  the  men  getting  far  more  than 
their  share  of  production.  It  is  the  first  business 
of  steamship  companies,  big  manufacturers,  and 
great  corporations  to  procure  dividends.  Their 
concern  for  the  workmen,  for  a  just  society,  for 
permanency  of  the  democratic  institutions  of 
America  is  secondary.  But  since,  as  we  have  seen, 
immigration  is  to  the  American  workingmen 
first  of  all  a  wages  question,  the  organized  wago 
earners  have  been  obliged  to  study  it  closely,  have 
hence  moved  beyond  the  merely  sentimental  stage 
in  contemplating  it,  have  many  a  time  soberly  dis- 
cussed it  in  their  unions  and  at  their  conventions, 
and  finally  have  decided  how  duty  to  themselves 
and  their  country  requires  them  to  act. 

The  annual  convention  of  the  American  Feder- 
ation of  Labor  held  at  Toronto,  Canada,  Novem- 
ber, 1909,  voted  for  restriction;  it  resolved  to 
demand  an  illiteracy  test,  a  money  in  pocket  test, 
an  increased  head  tax,  and  the  abolition  of  the 
Government  Distribution  Bureau.  Since  that  time 
the  policy  of  organized  labor  then  adopted  has 
been  strengthened  by  the  findings  of  the  United 
States  Immigration  Commission.  The  most  strik- 
ing passage  in  the  commission's  report  was: 


AND  IMMIGRATION  41 

"The  investigations  of  the  commission  show  an 
oversupply  of  unskilled  labor  in  basic  industries 
to  an  extent  which  indicates  an  oversupply  of 
unskilled  labor  in  the  industries  of  the  country  as 
a  whole,  and  therefore  demands  legislation  which 
will  at  the  present  time  restrict  the  further  admis- 
sion of  such  unskilled  labor." 

The  commission  held  it  to  be  desirable  that  "a 
sufficient  number  be  debarred  to  produce  a  marked 
effect  upon  the  present  supply  of  unskilled  labor.  ' ' 
It  recognized  as  possible  the  first  three  of  the  four 
methods  of  exclusion  recommended  by  organized 
labor,  with  others,  the  most  significant  of  which 
was  "the  limitation  of  the  number  of  each  race 
arriving  each  year  to  a  certain  percentage  of  the 
average  of  that  race  arriving  during  a  given 
period  of  years." 

Of  what  avail  are  "commissions  on  congestion" 
in  our  cities,  "State  labor  exchanges,"  "commit- 
tees of  investigation  into  the  condition  of  the 
poor,"  "surveys  of  industrial  centers,"  and  sim- 
ilar social  reform  agencies  or  movements,  if  they 
do  not  result  in  emphasizing  properly  the  real 
menace  to  the  American  working  classes  and  to  all 
American  society?  That  menace,  clearly,  lies  in 
the  many  millions  of  the  victims  of  poverty  and 
ignorance,  of  wretched  government  and  backward 
civilization,  in  southern  and  eastern  Europe.  To 
European  steamship  companies  and  great  Ameri- 
can capitalists  their  exploitation  has  been  as 
mines  of  gold  and  quarries  of  diamonds. 


CHAPTEE  III. 

THE   WAGE  EABNEKS  AND    COMPENSATION   FOB  INDUS- 
TBIAL,  ACCIDENTS. 

The  foremost  national  economic  issue  that  bears 
directly  on  the  labor  market,  as  we  have  seen  in 
the  preceding  chapter,  is  immigration.  However, 
the  most  urgent  practical  measure  to  provide  by 
legislation  for  the  protection  of  wage  earners 
against  the  want  and  suffering  resulting  from,  mis- 
fortunes to  which  they  are  peculiarly  liable,  is 
1 '  compensation.  ' ' 

In  this  one  word  compensation  are  comprised 
the  possible  methods  not  only  of  compensating 
wage  workers  or  their  families  in  case  of  indus- 
trial accidents  but  of  preventing  such  accidents. 
Where  compensation  has  been  established,  pre- 
vention has  followed.  Also,  wherever  enforced, 
the  two  measures  together  have  brought  about  a 
marked  decrease  in  the  fatalities  and  other  cas- 
ualties proportionate  to  the  number  of  persons  at 
work. 

Statistical  statements  as  to  the  industrial  acci- 
dents occurring  in  America  seem  incredible  to  the 
casual  reader  who  glances  at  the  subject  superfi- 
cially. Significance  of  the  extent  or  the  social 
import  of  the  facts  behind  their  tabular  present- 
ment usually  fails  to  settle  itself  clearly  in  such  a 


AND  COMPENSATION  FOB  ACCIDENTS  43 

person's  mind.  He  has  never  stopped  mentally  to 
digest  the  proportions  or  the  relations  of  the  facts, 
or  the  suggested  conditions  or  implied  conse- 
quences embodied  in  the  figures.  Just  as,  to  his 
mind,  falling  from  a  precipice  of  the  height  of  300 
feet  is  sure  death,  and  from  the  top  of  the  wall  of 
the  Yosemite,  with  its  3,000  feet,  is  no  more,  the 
horror  of  300  or  3,000  deaths  is  to  his  feelings 
much  the  same.  A  single  fatal  accident  occurring 
under  his  eye  is  more  shocking  to  him  than  read- 
ing a  sketchy  account  in  a  newspaper  of  a  thou- 
sand violent  deaths  in  the  antipodes.  Large  fig- 
ures standing  for  indefinite  ideas  fail  to  stir  his 
emotions  deeply.  Hence,  when  told  that  in  Ameri- 
can industries  a  certain  number  of  thousands  are 
killed  in  the  course  of  a  year,  a  reader  of  this 
description  may  dimly  doubt  that  it  is  wholly  true, 
or  read  with  the  impression  that  a  year  is  a  long 
span  of  measurement,  or,  in  his  skimming  of 
points  not  touching  himself  and  his  concentration 
on  points  regarding  his  own  interests,  he  may  be 
in  no  mental  state  of  receptivity  as  to  the  entire 
subject.  Industrial  risks  may  be  far  from  his  per- 
sonal experiences.  The  enormous  indictment  of 
society  contained  in  the  abstract  statistics  passing 
before  his  perhaps  inattentive  eyes  escapes  his 
discernment. 

But  let  us  look  for  a  moment  at  this  deplorable 
matter  of  death  and  maiming  in  our  industries  in 
a  light  apart  from  its  every-day  presentation  in 


44  THE  WAGE  EABNERS 

unmethodical  print,  as  most  of  us  see  it.  Let  us 
suppose  that  in  the  course  of  the  last  twelve 
months,  by  a  marvelous  mastery  of  certain  forces 
of  nature  through  new  mechanical  devices,  indus- 
trial production  has  received  a  ten-fold  stimulus. 
Imagine,  then,  how  the  world  would  stand  aghast 
if  tomorrow  morning  the  daily  papers  were  to  be 
taken  up,  as  they  would  be  to  the  extent  of  pages 
and  pages,  with  an  account  of  a  frightful  accident 
in  New  York  City  by  which  more  than  two  thou- 
sand workingmen  had  lost  their  lives  and  more 
than  twenty  thousand  had  been  badly  injured — 
the  occurrence  due  to  forces  operating  the 
newly  invented  machinery  to  the  full  extent  of 
its  enormous  power,  and  to  the  absence  of  protec- 
tion to  the  workers  against  its  complicated  parts. 
The  calamity  would,  indeed,  "stagger  humanity.*' 
For  a  month,  at  least,  harrowing  particulars — as 
to  the  causes  of  the  accident,  its  social  effects,  the 
experiences  of  the  wounded,  the  sad  plight  of  the 
families  of  the  killed — would  in  word  and  picture 
continue  to  pack  the  columns  of  the  press.  But, 
imagine  now  the  intense  horror,  the  woe,  the  con- 
sternation throughout  the  country,  and  indeed  all 
countries,  if  at  the  end  of  a  month  Chicago  were 
to  become  the  scene  of  a  similar  disaster,  in  which 
the  loss  in  killed  and  wounded  should  equal  that 
accompanying  the  accident  in  New  York.  Then, 
if  in  another  month  San  Francisco  were  to  tele- 
graph the  news  of  a  like  catastrophe  in  that  city — 


AND  COMPENSATION  FOE  ACCIDENTS  45 

what  would  all  civilized  mankind  begin  saying? 
Would  intelligent  men  any  longer  tolerate  calling 
such  an  occurrence  an  "accident"1?  And  if  the 
horrid  thing  went  on,  now  in  one  city  and  now  in 
another,  monthly  for  a  year,  would  not  the  uni- 
versal cry  go  up,  "Stop  this  slaughter  by  any 
means  possible,  however  costly  to  society!" 
Everywhere,  in  every  church,  club,  business  asso- 
ciation, chamber  of  commerce,  in  every  assem- 
blage of  men  and  women,  for  any  social  purpose, 
this  recurrent  destruction  of  men  by  the  thou- 
sands, each  event  resembling  in  its  bloodiness  the 
most  sickening  battle-fields  of  history,  would  be 
denounced  as  a  national  infamy.  Should  any 
hypocrite  refer  to  these  frightful  occurrences 
as  "acts  of  God,"  he  would  be  denounced  as 
blasphemous.  Should  an  apologist  refer  to  them 
as  "the  natural  price  of  our  industrial  pre- 
eminence," he  would  be  told  indignantly  that  life 
must  be  held  sacred  though  industry  should 
perish.  Should  it  be  clearly  shown  that  the  origin 
of  much  of  the  slaughter  lay  in  causes  for  the  most 
part  easily  removable — that,  in  fact,  they  had  been 
actually  done  away  with  largely  by  other  nations 
— sentiments  of  patriotism  would  promptly  rein- 
force the  instincts  of  humanity  in  our  people. 
Every  legislative  body,  every  court,  every  public 
man  speedily  would  be  constrained  to  lend  a  hand 
in  the  reforms  necessary  to  cut  down  to  a  mini- 
mum the  risks  in  this  respect  to  human  life.  No 


46  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

doubt,  too,  the  call  would  be  general  to  alleviate, 
through  appropriate  methods  of  insurance,  the 
suffering  consequent  upon  whatever  casualties,  in 
spite  of  the  best  of  human  care,  should  thenceforth 
occur  in  our  industries. 

Now,  what  part  does  imagination  play  in  this 
nightmare  of  a  picture?  It  has  merely  focussed 
the  actually  distributed  elements  of  time  and 
place.  Instead  of  the  wonderful  devices  of  the 
new  mechanics  having  been  suddenly  applied 
within  a  year,  they  have  been  the  gradual  growth 
of  a  century.  Instead  of  one  concentrated  mass 
accident  a  month  in  a  particular  city,  thousands 
of  separate  accidents  occur  in  the  course  of  every 
month  all  over  the  United  States. 

What  is  more,  the  real  number  of  killings  and 
serious  injuries  outnumber  by  far  the  two  thou- 
sand and  the  twenty  thousand  that  we  have  set 
down  for  our  imaginary  monthly  total.  No  one 
can  present  absolutely  accurate  statistics  on  this 
subject.  Our  government  makes  no  census  of  the 
victims  of  accidents  in  industries.  Statisticians 
disagree  in  estimating  their  number.  There  is  no 
common  agreement  as  to  what  degree  of  hurt  to  a 
workman  should  be  termed  "an  injury."  There 
is  a  border  line  of  time  between  an  outright 
fatality  and  a  death  after  a  period  in  which  other 
causes  than  the  accident  may  have  supervened. 
But  if  we  take  the  most  moderate  figures  on  the 
question  we  have  those  of  Dr.  Frederick  L.  Hoff- 


AND  COMPENSATION  FOB  ACCIDENTS  47 

man,  of  the  Prudential  Company,  the  specialty  of 
which  is  working-class  insurance,  whose  estimate 
is  30,000  to  35,000  fatal  industrial  accidents  in  the 
United  States  annually,  while  several  other  statis- 
ticians have  estimated  that  the  lowest  number  of 
persons  injured  at  their  work  sufficiently  to 
occasion  an  average  loss  of  two  weeks  is  at  least 
250,000  to  300,000.  Thus  the  actual  facts  of  indus- 
trial slaughter  outrun  by  twenty  per  cent,  or  more 
what  we  have  imagined.  Yet  there  are  estimates 
in  print,  from  men  qualified  to  form  them,  which 
are  nearly  double  those  here  quoted. 

Some  comparisons  may  be  drawn  to  show  how 
the  United  States  has  stood  still,  or  worse,  in  deal- 
ing with  this  national  problem.  For  the  twenty- 
one  years  1888-1908,  the  proportion  of  railway 
employes  killed  outright  in  this  country  remained 
nearly  constant  at  about  a  quarter  of  one  per  cent, 
each  year.  The  proportion  of  injuries,  however, 
increased.  With  the  expansion  of  the  industry  the 
number  should  have  about  doubled,  as  a  fact  it 
quadrupled.  For  British  railway  employes, 
fatalities  per  1,000  annually  average  seven-tenths 
of  one  per  cent.,  for  American,  2.41  per  cent.  For 
miners  we  have  Europe,  1.45 ;  United  States,  3.60 
— in  other  words,  for  each  10,000  miners  em- 
ployed, Europe  has  14  to  15  killed  every  year ;  the 
United  States  36.  In  all  the  industries  together, 
the  proportion  killed  here  is  three  times  the  num- 
ber for  any  other  country. 


48  THE  WAGE  EAENEBS 

Compensation  undeniably  is  followed  by  pre- 
vention. It  is  unnecessary  to  restate  here  in  any 
detail  the  experiences  on  this  point  of  Germany 
and  Great  Britain.  They  may  be  summed  up  in 
the  words  of  Dr.  Hoffman,  who,  pleading  that  "a 
most  earnest  effort  should  be  made  to  profit  by 
the  industrial  methods  of  European  countries," 
says  that  "it  should  not  be  impossible  to  save  at 
least  one-third,  and  perhaps  one  half  [of  our  total 
mortality],  by  intelligent  and  rational  methods  of 
factory  inspection,  legislation,  and  control."  He 
further  states  that  the  non-fatal  accidents,  which 
he  computes  as  numbering  in  all  -  two  millions 
annually,  "not  only  involve  a  vast  amount  of 
human  suffering  and  sorrow,  but  materially  cur- 
tail the  normal  longevity  among  those  exposed  to 
the  often  needless  risk  of  industrial  casualties." 

Not  only  have  the  two  other  great  industrial 
countries  of  the  world,  England  and  Germany, 
shown  us  the  way  to  prevent  fully  50  per  cent,  of 
the  average  of  our  industrial  killings  and  maim- 
ings,  but  they  have  carried  compensation  to  a 
science  sufficiently  advanced  to  permit  us  to  profit 
by  their  example.  With  us,  in  this  matter,  the  main 
practical  problems  at  present  relate,  first,  to 
adapting  the  best  foreign  methods  and  practice 
to  our  dual  system  of  government,  and,  second,  to 
bringing  compensation  within  constitutional  limi- 
tations. 

It  has  been  far  from  enough  in  the  United 


AND  COMPENSATION  FOE  ACCIDENTS  49 

States  in  this  work  of  substituting  compensation 
for  traditional  employers'  liability,  to  shock  and 
reshock  the  country  with  the  startling  facts  of 
our  delinquency.  The  task  of  exposition  and  pro- 
test, while  it  has  been  fulfilled  sufficiently  to  stir 
to  action  groups  of  men  of  advanced  opinions  and 
patriotic  and  benevolent  sentiments,  seems  to 
have  failed  to  work  the  truth,  at  once  disgraceful 
and  terrible,  into  the  very  hearts  and  minds  of 
the  general  masses,  as  must  be  done  before  our 
people  fully  realize  the  duty  thereby  imposed 
upon  them.  This  stage  of  arousing  public  senti- 
ment it  seems  to  be  necessary  to  go  over  again 
and  again — by  repetition  of  oft-printed  statistics, 
by  quotation  of  authorities  on  the  subject,  by 
turning  the  picture  to  every  angle  of  fact  and 
every  angle  of  the  imagination.  To  accumulate 
a  proper  momentum  in  favor  of  compensation, 
however,  at  the  present  stage  in  the  progress  of 
the  movement,  seems  to  be  the  least  baffling  part 
of  the  work.  Support  of  the  people  is  to  be  a 
certainty,  some  time,  we  may  be  assured,  but 
what  as  to  the  law  necessary  to  establish  a  system 
of  uniform  and  general  indemnity? 

In  Germany  and  England,  procedure  after  con- 
viction as  to  the  social  necessity  of  relieving  the 
working-classes  of  the  burden  incident  to  indus- 
trial accidents  was  by  an  open  road.  Germany 
chose  one  method,  England  another.  In  Germany, 
State,  employer,  and  employed  contribute  by  pre- 


50  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

scribed  methods  to  the  compensation  funds  of 
the  industries.  In  England,  employes  make  no 
direct  payment,  the  employers  generally  acquit- 
ting themselves  of  their  part  of  the  duty  by 
bringing  into  service  the  insurance  companies. 
But  in  our  country,  except  in  a  few  States,  it 
has  not  been  made  certain  that  the  fundamental 
law  is  adaptable  to  either  of  these  two  methods 
or  to  any  other  yet  proposed,  if  the  relief  of  in- 
dustry in  general  be  contemplated.  The  actual 
problem  of  compensation  in  this  country  is  how 
to  obviate  a  decision  by  the  Court  of  Appeals  of 
New  York,  possibly  to  be  followed  in  other  States, 
rendered  March  24,  1911,  by  which  a  tentative 
law  affecting  dangerous  trades,  passed  the  previ- 
ous year,  was  declared  to  be  unconstitutional. 
The  court  regarded  the  law  as  violating  private 
right  "by  taking  the  property  of  one  and  giving 
it  to  another  without  due  process  of  law."  Here 
is  not  the  place  to  try  to  argue  down  the  long 
series  of  legal  points  made  against  the  statute  by 
the  court  in  its  opinion  of  ten  thousand  words. 
Nor  can  we  dwell  on  the  outcry  of  surprise  and 
indignation  which,  when  the  court  gave  out  its 
decision,  went  up  throughout  the  land  from  all 
the  social  agencies  promotive  of  the  welfare  of 
the  masses.  The  court  seemed  to  repudiate  what 
in  the  light  of  accepted  advanced  teachings  are 
imperative  duties  of  the  State  toward  the  work- 
ing-classes. Nor  is  it  worth  while  here  to  do 


AND  COMPENSATION  FOR  ACCIDENTS  51 

more  than  merely  call  attention  to  the  fact  that 
the  New  York  law  was  the  result  of  patient  study, 
research,  and  labor  on  the  part  of  representative 
committees  of  citizens,  many  of  them  accustomed 
to  deal  with  matters  of  law  and  legislation.  The 
court  settled  the  question  for  New  York  in  its 
way  by  its  lights.  To  what  extent  its  decision 
stands  as  precedent  for  courts  in  other  States 
remains  to  be  seen. 

A  proposition  so  to  amend  the  New  York  con- 
stitution that  it  may  authorize  a  compulsory  com- 
pensation law  has  since  been  under  consideration 
by  the  Legislature.  Undoubtedly  it  is  a  fact  that 
working-class  opinion  in  the  United  States  is  at 
present  strongly  in  favor  of  automatic  compen- 
sation and  opposed  to  its  alternative,  State  in- 
surance, as  usually  presented  up  to  this  time. 
The  workers  feel,  first,  that  any  compulsory  pay- 
ment by  them  for  insurance  would  be  a  deduction 
from  wages,  and  second,  that  their  customary 
share  in  the  risks  and  losses  in  any  and  all  occu- 
pations have  never  obtained  from  society  due 
consideration.  In  countless  ways  the  health  of 
the  wage  workers  while  they  are  at  work  is  under- 
mined and  their  lives  shortened,  and  there  is  no 
indemnity.  For  all  minor  accidents,  by  which 
only  a  few  days'  work  and  pay  are  lost,  no  com- 
pensation can  be  forthcoming.  No  life-insurance 
can  adequately  reimburse  the  widow  and  orphan 
for  the  loss  of  the  bread-winner.  While  on  the 


52  THE  WAGE  EAENEES 

side  of  the  employers  there  may  come  a  financial 
loss  of  a  small  percentage  through  compensation, 
sure  to  be  minimized  and  generalized  by  them 
through  a  system  of  insurance,  on  the  side  of  the 
workingman  the  injuries  which  do  not  disable 
him  permanently,  even  when  compensated  up  to 
any  possible  legal  limit,  may  leave  the  individual 
a  loser  to  the  extent  of  an  undermined  consti- 
tution or  displacement  in  his  grade  as  a  work- 
man. Such  considerations,  which  could  be  en- 
larged upon,  lead  the  wage  earners  to  assert  that 
compensation  is  not  justly  a  burden  of  labor. 

That  certain  fictions  of  the  present-day  legal 
theories  lingering  in  the  statutes  and  judicial  in- 
terpretations of  the  common  law,  regarding  in- 
demnity to  workmen  for  injuries,  are  in  time  to 
be  wholly  displaced  by  living  truths  there  can  be 
little  doubt.  Those  fictions  had  their  origin  in 
the  facts  of  the  old  days  of  production  on  a  small 
scale,  with  the  employer  a  shopmate ;  we  now  live 
in  the  era  of  production  on  the  trust  scale,  with 
the  employer  an  impersonality.  Times  have 
changed ;  circumstances  of  employment  have  com- 
pletely changed;  the  dicta  of  the  law  must  con- 
sequently change  with  the  facts.  Exempting  an 
employer  from  responsibility  because  an  injury 
to  an  employe  has  been  caused  by  the  act  of  one 
out  of  perhaps  twenty  thousand  fellow-workmen 
is  clearly  injustice.  To  blame  an  employe  for 
alleged  neglect  of  precautions  against  dangers  of 


AND  COMPENSATION  FOB  ACCIDENTS  53 

which  he  could  not  be  aware  as  existing  in  the 
maze  of  machinery  in  a  huge  workshop  is  sheer 
nonsense  and  cruelty.  To  say  that  the  employe 
assumed  the  risks  in  an  occupation  which  is  to- 
day entirely  made  up  of  risks  is  mere  empty  talk. 
These  decayed  relics  of  the  so-called  wisdom  of 
the  law  are  of  a  certainty  to  be  thrown  aside. 
To  the  social  conscience  of  today,  as  foundations 
for  unjust  dealings  with  employes,  they  are  in- 
tolerable. 

That  workmen  can  on  the  average  collect 
damages  in  only  eleven  cases  in  a  hundred 
brought  in  the  courts  indicates  the  legal  chicanery 
of  counsel  hairsplitting  over  antiquated  notions, 
and  not  the  prevalent  American  sense  of  fair 
dealing.  What  an  exhibition  of  squandering 
energy  and  money  is  made  in  the  hundred  million 
dollars  paid  by  employers  in  the  eleven  years 
1894-1905  as  premiums  to  liability  insurance  com- 
panies, of  which  only  43  per  cent,  was  awarded 
to  injured  workmen,  to  be  further  diminished  by 
a  large  percentage  through  costs  and  attorneys' 
fees.  The  trial  of  liability  cases  in  the  courts  is 
a  national  burden.  Governor  Hadley  of  Missouri 
has  asserted  that  the  taxes  going  to  the  support 
of  the  judges  engaged  upon  them  form  a  sum 
greater  than  the  total  recovered  by  the  injured 
workmen.  The  president  of  the  Travelers'  In- 
surance Company  says  that  more  than  one-half 
the  time  of  the  courts  is  taken  up  in  settling  con- 


54  THE  WAGE  EAENEES 

troversies  between  employers  and  employed. 
Systematic  compensation  would  wipe  out  this 
social  waste. 

The  New  York  Commission  which  reported 
favorably  the  bill  which  as  a  law  was  subsequently 
killed  by  the  Court  of  Appeals,  thus  summarized 
the  reasons  for  proposing  to  rescind  the  present 
laws  relating  to  liability  for  accidents  and  sub- 
stitute compensation: 

"1 — The  present  system  in  New  York  rests  on 
a  basis  that  is  economically  unwise  and  unfair ;  in 
operation  it  is  wasteful,  uncertain,  and  productive 
of  antagonisms  between  workmen  and  employers. 

"2 — It  is  satisfactory  to  none  and  tolerable 
only  to  those  employers  and  workmen  who  practi- 
cally disregard  their  legal  rights  and  obligations 
and  fairly  share  the  burden  of  accidents  in  in- 
dustries. 

"3 — The  evils  of  the  system  are  most  marked 
in  hazardous  employments,  where  the  trade  risk  is 
high  and  serious  accidents  frequent. 

"4 — As  a  matter  of  fact,  workmen  in  the 
dangerous  trades  do  not,  and  practically  cannot, 
provide  for  themselves  adequate  accident  insur- 
ance, and  therefore  the  burden  of  serious  acci- 
dents falls  on  the  workmen  least  able  to  bear  it, 
and  brings  many  of  them  and  their  families  to 
want." 

Within  the  last  four  years,  after  official  investi- 
gation of  the  subject,  either  through  special  com- 
missions or  committees  of  the  legislatures,  a 
number  of  our  States,  including  most  of  those 


AND  COMPENSATION  FOB  ACCIDENTS  55 

in  the  lead  in  industry,  have,  by  what  amount  to 
tentative  laws,  considered  and  set  up  one  form  or 
another  of  either  direct  compensation  or  State 
insurance,  usually,  however,  of  very  restricted 
application.  Compensation  laws,  in  most  in- 
stances elective,  have  been  passed  in  California, 
Kansas,  New  Hampshire,  New  Jersey,  New  York 
(decided  to  be  unconstitutional),  Wisconsin,  Illi- 
nois, Maryland,  Montana,  Ohio,  Massachusetts, 
Nevada,  Michigan,  Arizona,  Rhode  Island,  and 
Washington.  In  California  and  Wisconsin  the 
compensation  laws  are  compulsory  as  to  work- 
men for  the  State  and  the  municipalities.  Iowa, 
Pennsylvania,  North  Dakota,  Connecticut,  Dela- 
ware, Colorado,  Nebraska,  West  Virginia,  and 
Texas  have  commissions  studying  the  question. 
There  is  considerable  variation  in  the  provisions 
of  the  laws  as  passed.  By  most  of  them  only 
"hazardous"  or  "dangerous"  occupations  are 
affected.  A  uniform  law  for  all  the  States,  pro- 
posed in  a  draft  for  compulsory  compensation  in 
dangerous  occupations,  has  been  prepared  by  the 
American  Federation  of  Labor.  Another  sub- 
mitted by  the  National  Civic  Federation,  contains 
unessential  differences  on  points  of  phraseology 
and  provision.  A  draft  has  also  been  issued  for 
"Compulsory  State  insurance  if  practical,  other- 
wise compulsory  compensation,"  by  what  is 
known  as  the  "Chicago  Conference,"  in  which 
the  American  Association  for  Labor  Legislation 


56  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

was  a  prime  mover,  and  the  American  Bar  Asso- 
ciation has  declared  in  favor  of  the  enactment  of 
"uniform  laws  for  compensation  for  industrial 
accidents"  by  "all  the  States  and  by  the  United 
States  within  its  jurisdiction." 

Space  permits  of  no  discussion  here  of  the 
merits  of  these  various  laws  and  bills.  Difficulties 
in  the  whole  problem  are  suggested  by  their 
variety  and  their  inapplicability  to  industry  in 
general.  The  steps  thus  far  made  in  the  different 
States  taking  action,  and  the  failure  of  the  other 
States  to  take  any  action,  together  with  the  diver- 
gences in  principles,  methods,  application,  and 
possible  effectiveness  of  the  laws  adopted,  all 
leave  the  situation  far  from  satisfactory. 

Among  other  propositions  before  the  country, 
there  is  one  for  a  Federal  insurance  tax,  to  be 
collected  and  disbursed  by  mutual  associations, 
divided  by  trades,  as  in  Germany.  The  iron  and 
steel  trades,  for  example,  would  by  this  method 
have  employers  and  employes  in  one  association, 
paying  each  year  a  tax  equaling  what  would  be 
necessary  to  meet  the  benefits,  plus  a  reasonable 
amount  for  reserve,  continuously,  as  long  as  li- 
ability lasts,  and  during  widowhood  of  wives  and 
orphanage  of  children.  Among  the  supporters  of 
this  system  are  lawyers  and  insurance  men  who 
assert  their  belief  in  its  constitutionality.  It 
would  fall  under  that  provision  of  the  Federal 
constitution  which  authorizes  the  collection  of 


AND  COMPENSATION  FOB  ACCIDENTS  57 

taxes  "to  promote  the  general  welfare."  This 
proposition  is  worthy  of  serious  consideration. 
Its.  advocates  affirm  that  it  is  framed  on  a  study 
of  the  results  to  date  of  the  German  system.  There 
is  pending  in  Congress  a  bill  establishing  compen- 
sation for  workmen  employed  on  interstate  rail- 
roads. This  bill  was  recommended  as  a  result  of 
exhaustive  investigation  made  by  a  Federal  com- 
mission. 

Meantime,  while  the  States  are  proceeding 
separately,  tentatively,  and  in  uncertainty,  the 
United  States  remains,  for  example,  the  only  in- 
dustrial nation  on  earth  that  maintains,  as  it  does 
in  perhaps  90  per  cent,  of  its  accident  cases,  the 
old  system  of  liability  based  on  negligence! 

Our  wage  earners  in  general  hold  that  industry 
should  bear  the  burden  of  the  pecuniary  loss  sus- 
tained by  workmen  through  industrial  accidents. 
Associated  with  many  men  of  altruistic  character 
who  are  not  wage  workers,  representative  labor 
men  are  discussing  the  subject,  their  expectation 
being  that  finally  a  law,  or  a  set  of  laws,  will  be 
evolved  which  will  constitutionally  afford  to  the 
victims  of  industrial  accidents,  or  in  case  of  death 
their  dependent  survivors,  if  not  automatic  com- 
pensation without  cost,  a  system  of  insurance 
yielding  all  the  benefits  of  such  compensation  and 
adding  nothing  to  the  burdens  of  the  wage 
earners.  Every  good  citizen  would  naturally  de- 


58  THE  WAGE  EAENEES 

sire  to  see  the  United  States  removed  from  the 
unenviable  position  it  holds  among  the  nations  in 
this  respect  today.  The  task  ought  not  to  be 
beyond  American  ingenuity  and  statesmanship. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  WAGE  EABNEBS  AND  INDUSTRIAL  EFFICIENCY. 

"Efficiency,"  within  the  last  year  or  two,  has 
had  "its  day  in  court."  Bather,  it  has  been  made 
one  of  those  sensational  topics  which  from  time 
to  time  get  a  hearing  in  that  big  forum  of  the 
American  press  to  which,  while  the  discussion 
is  novel,  are  admitted  pleaders  pro  and  con. 
Whether  the  live  subject  in  the  public  eye  relates 
to  politics,  economics,  ethics,  or  mechanics,  the 
spectators  (the  great  public)  take  up  with  it 
awhile,  permit  the  orators  to  have  their  say  on  it, 
and  then  turn  their  attention  to  the  next  "film." 
However,  with  respect  to  any  one  of  the  causes 
thus  brought  forward,  there  is  usually  a  part  of 
the  great  mass  directly  interested.  This,  a  group 
of  itself,  continues  to  study  its  particular  subject 
after  the  first  flurry  over  it,  and,  subdividing  in 
the  debate,  sets  to  work  the  one  section  to  pro- 
mote and  the  other  to  defeat  an  advance  of  the 
disputed  idea.  Finally,  society  adopts  the  idea 
or  its  principle,  in  part  or  as  a  whole,  in  accor- 
dance with  what  in  it  is  sound  and  useful,  or  else, 
persisting  in  looking  upon  it  as  a  dead  issue,  or 
a  past  fashion,  stands  impervious. 

"Efficiency"  has  quickly  dropped  off  quite  to 
the  limits  of  group  discussion.  Already  the  body 


60  THE  WAGE  EAENEES 

of  spectators  in  the  big  auditorium  demand  for 
the  arena  fresh  thrillers,  new  voices,  novel  acts, 
or  show  themselves  eager  for  a  sight  of  the  grand 
old  gladiators  performing  time-honored  plays, 
especially  the  political. 

But,  for  its  brief  hour,  " Efficiency"  had  a 
great  run.  It  was  unexpectedly  set  out  on  the 
stage  in  the  national  coliseum  in  a  single  day.  A 
very  distinguished  and  amiable  lover  of  mankind, 
who  temporarily  obtained  place  at  the  megaphone, 
proclaimed  that  he  knew  how  the  nation  could 
save  a  million  dollars  a  day  in  but  one  branch  of 
its  multifarious  concerns.  That  startling  an- 
nouncement was  sufficient  to  cause  the  mighty 
audience  to  demand  a  demonstration.  It  is  true, 
a  goodly  number  of  the  spectators  had  already 
seen  the  unexpectedly  heralded  industrial  playlet 
in  a  freak  side-show,  were  familiar  with  its  ex- 
aggerations on  the  boards,  and  more  than  suspect- 
ed its  true  purpose.  In  its  "try-out"  on  a  large 
scale,  which  followed,  its  original  managers  were 
joined  by  many  volunteer  coadjutors,  not  wholly 
welcome  to  them,  not  recognized  by  them  as 
staunchly  orthodox,  and  who,  perhaps,  distorted 
their  plot  or  misapplied  or  magnified  its  moral. 

Quite  within  the  expectations  of  reason,  the 
great  public  soon  had  before  it  volumes  of  propo- 
sitions to  re-form,  re-adjust,  and  re-lubricate  the 
wheels  which  run  any  and  all  of  our  social  insti- 
tutions— the  law-making  mills,  the  courts,  the 


AND  INDUSTRIAL  EFFICIENCY       61 

professions,  the  administrations  of  city,  State, 
and  nation.  Before  long,  little  old-fashioned 
points  in  efficiency  gave  way  before  comprehen- 
sive theories  for  attaining  universal  perfection. 
What  was  mere  shop  management  to  the  read- 
justment of  all  the  systems  of  construction  and 
transportation  ?  What  was  mere  good  housekeep- 
ing to  the  science  of  city  planning?  What  petty 
individual  thrift  to  collective  co-operation?  What 
ordinary  parental  duties  to  race-elevating  eugen- 
ics? 

It  was  thus  the  fate  of  pure  and  simple  "ef- 
ficiency" to  be  swamped  in  a  stream  of  fact  and 
fiction  itself  had  started  running.  When  Mr. 
Stimson,  chief  engineer  of  the  Universal  Audit 
Company  of  New  York,  before  a  Congressional 
committee  investigating  the  subject,  slightingly 
referred  to  "the  Taylor  system"  of  scientific 
management  as  "only  one  little  bit  of  detail"  of 
"the  whole  subject  of  industrial  efficiency,"  the 
country  apparently  deemed  him  hardly  any  more 
absurd  than  Mr.  Taylor.  When  Mr.  Brandeis, 
speaking  to  the  great  captains  of  the  railway  in- 
terests, told  them  he  had  experts  at  command 
willing  to  show  them,  in  their  inexpertness,  the 
way  to  save  yearly  hundreds  of  millions,  the 
small  subject  of  shop  economics  dropped  down 
beyond  the  horizon.  When  efficiency  engineers — 
in  business  as  individuals,  firms,  and  corporations 
— started  up  all  over  the  land,  with  suggestions 


62  THE  WAGE  EAENEBS 

for  legerdemain  in  every  mode  of  human  proce- 
dure, the  voluminous  extolling  of  Mr.  Taylor  and 
his  system  of  " scientific  management"  by  his 
"write-up"  journalists  seemed  a  waste  of  print- 
er's ink. 

Certainly  it  is  true  that  at  many  points  our 
civilization  is  but  half-baked.  Nothing,  yet,  goes 
just  right.  Perfection  is  far  off.  Draw  close  to 
any  one  of  the  professions — teaching,  for  instance 
— and  you  find  a  confusion  of  critics'  voices  cry- 
ing chaos.  Medicine  has  a  dozen  variant  schools ; 
surely  most  of  them  must  teach  more  or  less  of 
error.  Supreme  courts  divide — five  to  four.  As 
for  religion,  let  us  here  maintain  a  respectful 
silence.  It  is  to  be  granted,  measurement  of  in- 
accuracies, of  method  or  movement,  in  these 
spheres  cannot  be  taken  with  geometrical  preci- 
sion. Nevertheless,  when  efficiency  is  the  theme, 
unbiased  inquirers  are  warranted  in  objecting  to 
being  shown  only  the  comparatively  small  area 
in  which  the  stop-watch  is  the  supreme  test. 
Especially  is  the  wage  worker  justified  in  calling 
out  to  the  audience  that  it  is  unfair  that  "effi- 
ciency" should  select  him  as  the  one  horrible  ex- 
ample while  sinners  in  so  many  other  social 
categories  must  be  worse  than  he,  since  he,  of  all 
others,  truly  is  a  worker,  the  one  performing  the 
tasks  essential  to  society. 

Now,  that's  the  point  in  the  wage  worker's  ob- 
jection to  Mr.  Taylor's  playlet,  "Efficiency."  In 


AND  INDUSTRIAL  EFFICIENCY       63 

its  scenes  Mr.  Taylor  has  made  his  caricature  of 
the  workingman  the  villain,  has  the  limelight  full 
upon  him  without  cease,  and,  professing  for  him 
a  saintly  benevolence,  has  the  other  leading  char- 
acter, Big  Capital,  sweat  him,  cheat  him,  deceive 
him,  and  on  the  whole  exploit  his  time,  his  mus- 
cles, his  nerves,  his  whole  bodily  mechanism  in- 
humanly. The  real  workingman,  in  the  audience, 
resents  the  falsification  of  his  character.  He 
thinks  it  fair  that  the  limelight  should  be  turned 
on  the  other  classes  of  men  engaged  in  manufac- 
ture, business,  commerce,  or  in  any  social  role 
whatever,  and  the  stop-watch  or  the  microscope 
used  on  them.  Let  them  be  seen  publicly,  in  full, 
just  as  they  are,  their  demerits  unexaggerated. 
The  wage  earner  believes  he  would  issue  from 
such  a  "try-out,"  level  with  the  best. 

The  wage  earner,  as  the  most  deeply  interested 
man  in  the  industrial  group  engaged  in  discussing 
Mr.  Taylor's  "Efficiency,"  with  its  Emerson- 
Gantt-Gilbreth  &  Co.  additions  and  corrections,  is 
prepared  to  submit  to  the  public  some  views  of 
his  own  regarding  its  alleged  facts  and  undoubted 
teachings.  These  views  may  thus  be  summarized : 
It  is  libelously  untrue  that  "soldiering"  to  any- 
thing like  the  extent  described  by  Mr.  Taylor,  is 
characteristic  of  American  workmen.  There  is 
no  available  statistical  basis  for  the  statement 
that  50,000  employes  are  today  working  under 
the  Taylor  scheme.  The  system  is  not  rapidly 


64  THE  WAGE  EAENERS 

spreading;  it  has  been  dropped  in  some  large 
works  where  it  was  once  in  practice.  Its  use  in 
government  arsenals  has  been  in  large  measure 
condemned  by  a  Congressional  commission,  after 
careful  investigation.  It  has,  where  tried,  been 
far  from  a  uniform  success.  In  no  case  has  there 
been  more  than  a  half-truth  in  the  statement 
made  by  its  promoters  that  "the  system  raises 
wages."  The  higher  wages  to  be  earned  by  the 
small  proportion  of  workmen  speeded  up  to  its 
requirements  are  inevitably  subject  eventually  to 
that  law  of  economics  by  which  competition  in  an 
over-stocked  market  lowers  prices ;  hence  the  per- 
sistent professions  of  the  promoters  of  efficiency, 
that  they  intend  to  raise  wages,  must  count  as 
naught.  What  it  has  done,  as  to  wages,  has  been 
to  raise  them  temporarily  for  a  small  proportion 
of  a  force  and  lower  them  for  mechanics  in  gen- 
eral, while  depriving  a  portion,  through  unem- 
ployment, of  any  wage  at  all.  The  system  un- 
doubtedly found  origin  in  socially  unreputable 
sources — the  Midvale  and  Bethlehem  companies. 
It  is  rarely,  if  ever,  practicable  in  small  shops. 
Its  applications  are  chiefly  to  be  found  in  con- 
nection with  operations  which  are  uniform  and 
repeated  indefinitely,  and  together  represent  but 
a  few  simple  phases  of  the  machinist's  trade, 
which  is  characterized  by  a  multiplicity  of  prac- 
tical problems  involving  intricate  movements. 
Efficiency — scientific  management — as  a  compre- 


AND  INDUSTRIAL  EFFICIENCY       65 

hensive  industrial  and  social  proposition  has  been 
absurdly  overtrumpeted,  Mr.  Taylor's  own  claims 
frequently  being  the  basis.  It  obviously  is  inap- 
plicable to  most  of  the  work  measured  only  by 
time,  the  unit  in  a  large  percentage  of  all  industry 
and  other  service.  It  is  not  a  fact,  as  its  sup- 
porters assert,  that  efficiency  has  proceeded  with- 
out occasioning  strikes.  It  is  a  fact  that  efficiency 
is  interwoven  with  the  piece  and  bonus  and  con- 
tract and  fining  systems,  with  their  burdens  and 
abuses. 

Let  us  review  this  summary  and  cite  facts  bear- 
ing upon  its  points.  As  to  the  industrial  disease 
of  "soldiering,"  Mr.  Taylor,  writing  of  the  Mid- 
vale  works,  says:  "The  workmen  together  had 
carefully  planned  just  how  fast  each  job  should 
be  done,  and  they  had  set  a  pace  for  each  machine, 
which  amounted  to  about  one-third  of  a  good 
day's  work."  In  his  edition  of  "Shop  Manage- 
ment," Mr.  Taylor  writes  of  "most  of  the  men  in 
the  shop"  that  they  "will  'soldier'  "  to  the  ex- 
tent of  three  or  four  hundred  per  cent,  if  allowed 
to  do  so.  This  charge  against  the  American 
workingman,  it  is  to  be  clearly  understood,  is  the 
starting  point  of  Mr.  Taylor's  system.  He  de- 
picts, in  a  vivid  coloring,  a  sort  of  detestable 
cancer,  with  intent  to  follow  up  his  diagnosis  with 
his  cure-all.  He  thus  presents  to  us  the  played- 
out  methods  of  the  magic  soap  advertiser.  His 
exaggerations  are  apparent  to  all  employers  and 


66  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

employes  of  average  experience ;  as  they  must  be 
also  to  all  persons  of  common  sense.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  if  a  force  of  workmen  should  loaf  away 
only  one-half  their  time,  it  would  pay  to  employ 
one  supervising  taskmaster  to  every  three  men, 
to  do  nothing  but  watch  that  the  workers  each 
should  do  a  fair  day's  work.  This  indictment  of 
the  wage-earning  classes  by  Mr.  Taylor  has  been 
demonstrated  by  Mr.  Gompers  to  be  a  stupid 
libel.  Its  complete  refutation  being  of  the  first 
importance,  Mr.  Gompers'  treatment  of  the  point 
is  here  quoted. 

"It  would  offend  the  common  sense  of  even  the 
casual  observer  to  maintain  that  piecework  rates 
usually  lead  to  'soldiering.'  It  is  the  universal 
testimony  of  men  who  have  earned  their  wages 
at  piecework  that  the  tendency  to  speeding  up 
comes  from  the  man  himself.  He  wants  the  high- 
est amount  of  wages  possible  on  Saturday  night. 
Now,  what  proportion  of  the  wage  earners  in  this 
nation  are  engaged  in  TDiecework?  Here  is  a  list 
of  occupations  in  which  it  is  more  or  less  common : 

"Bakers,  barbers,  blacksmiths,  boilermakers, 
bookbinders,  boot  and  shoe  workers,  broom  and 
whisk  makers,  brushmakers,  car  workers,  chain- 
makers,  cigarmakers,  cloth  hat  and  cap  makers, 
coopers,  lace  curtain  operatives,  watch  case  en- 
gravers, fur  workers,  garment  workers,  glass  bot- 
tle^  blowers,  glove  workers,  pocket  knife  blade 
grinders  and  finishers,  table  knife  grinders,  hat- 
ters, iron,  steel,  and  tin  workers ;  jewelry  workers, 
lathers,  leather  workers,  lithographic  pressfeed- 
ers,  longshoremen,  metal  polishers,  coal  and 
metalliferous  miners,  molders,  plate  printers,  pot- 


AND  INDUSTRIAL  EFFICIENCY       67 

ters;  pulp,  sulphite,  and  paper  mill  workers; 
shingle  weavers,  stove  mounters,  tailors,  textile 
workers,  tin  workers,  printers,  upholsterers, 
elastic  goring  weavers,  wire  weavers,  wood  work- 
ers, and  other  minor  callings  too  numerous  to 
mention. 

1  'When  this  list  is  studied,  the  reader  sees  at 
once  a  direct  contradiction  in  this  considerable 
proportion  of  industry  of  Doctor  Taylor's  asser- 
tion as  to  the  extent  of  the  plague  of  'soldiering' 
or  deliberate  inefficiency. 

"What  as  to  the  large  class  of  occupations 
which  move  by  time-table?  Take  as  an  example 
the  passenger  trains  or  the  electric  street-car 
systems  throughout  the  United  States.  We  have 
in  view  in  this  category  many  other  occupations, 
including  elevator  running,  all  forms  of  police 
work,  the  officials  great  and  small  engaged  in 
steamship  transportation.  In  the  same  class  fall 
cooks,  waiters,  hotel  and  restaurant  help  in  gen- 
eral. In  fact,  we  have,  further,  actors,  stationary 
engineers  and  firemen,  musicians,  postoffice  clerks, 
carriers,  telegraphers,  salesmen,  and  many  stage 
employes.  Is  it  possible  for  men  in  these  occu- 
pations to  deliver  a  third  of  a  day's  work  for  a 
full  day's  work? 

"Another  classification  is  of  wage  earners  on 
timework  whose  output  may  be  measured.  Among 
these,  as  examples,  are  bakery  and  confectionery 
workers,  barbers,  bill  posters,  blacksmiths,  boot 
and  shoe  workers,  garment  cutters,  bottle  blowers, 
glove  workers,  hatters,  much  work  done  by  litho- 
graphers and  printers,  especially  those  in  the  com- 
posing-room." 


68  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

If  " soldiering"  were  as  common  as  Mr.  Taylor 
describes  it,  his  thirty  years  of  crusading  against 
it  might  reasonably  have  brought  five  million 
wage  earners  under  his  system.  He  claims  fifty 
thousand.  Former  president  James  O'Connell, 
International  Association  of  Machinists,  testify- 
ing before  the  Congressional  committee  of  in- 
quiry on  the  subject,  said  that  at  the  Watertown 
Arsenal,  where  the  system  had  been  in  use  for  a 
couple  of  years,  it  had  only  reached  a  very  small 
percentage  of  the  employes,  but  he  supposed  it 
would  be  claimed  that  all  were  under  the  Taylor 
system ;  possibly  by  this  method  of  calculation  the 
total  of  fifty  thousand  had  been  made  out.  Mr. 
Taylor's  book  gives  no  census  of  his  forced  con- 
verts or  list  of  the  places  where  they  work.  So 
far  as  may  be  judged  by  press  accounts,  Mr. 
Taylor's  list  is  suffering  losses.  Of  his  system, 
James  J.  Hill  said:  "It  is  all  rot;  it  has  cost 
the  Santa  Fe  Railroad  a  million  dollars  to  try  it, 
and  they  have  abandoned  it."  Machinist  dele- 
gates told  the  Congressional  committee  that  it 
had  been  given  up  by  the  American  Locomotive 
Company  and — "most  unkindest  cut  of  all" — the 
Bethlehem  Steel  Company,  favorite  scene  of  the 
"efficiency  engineers'  "  earlier  stop-watch  per- 
formances. 

_  Newspaper  readers  are  becoming  familiar  with 
strikes  against  the  system.  The  Rock  Island 
Arsenal  men  struck  through  the  means  safest  to 


AND  INDUSTEIAL  EFFICIENCY       69 

government  employes;  they  tackled  Congress 
about  it.  A  division  of  the  Watertown  employes 
walked  out.  At  the  Philadelphia  plant  of  the 
Keystone  Watch  Case  Company  nearly  200  un- 
organized men  struck  against  the  stop-watch  sys- 
tem. The  American  wage  earner  may  gain  the 
impression  that  he  has  been  already  rushed  quite 
to  the  reasonable  limit  when  he  contemplates  the 
usual  reference-book  table  of  the  comparative 
annual  productivity  of  workmen.  It  runs: 

American $2,450 

Canadian    1,455 

Australian  900 

French    640 

English 556 

German    460 

As  to  raising  wages,  two  points  come  in  view. 
(1)  To  what  extent  has  "efficiency"  raised 
wages?  (2)  Have  its  advocates  any  warrant  in 
prophesying  that  the  wage  workers  accepting  it 
will  not  have  their  wages  lowered?  Here  are 
plain,  undeniable  facts  which  bear  on  both  these 
points :  In  all  the  stock  examples  of  the  efficiency 
program  the  survivors  of  the  original  force  have 
obtained,  as  alleged,  for  the  time  being,  an  in- 
crease. But  the  helpers,  the  performers  of  the 
preliminary  motions  dropped  from  the  high- 
priced  workman's  routine,  the  "handy  men"  who 
are  substitutes  for  mechanics  qualified  for  the 


70  THE  WAGE  EAENEES 

trade,  all  take  only  the  wage  of  the  unskilled  labor 
market.  We  find  in  the  index  to  Mr.  Taylor's 
book  no  reference  to  his  admission  (page  82)  of 
a  reduction  in  the  wages  of  stop-watch  lathe  men 
at  ''the  beginning  of  the  recent  fall  in  the  scale 
of  wages  throughout  the  country."  Here  is  a 
clear  concession  to  the  law  of  competition  which 
reduces  wages  in  an  overstocked  labor  market. 
And  since  Mr.  Taylor  does  not  fail  to  point  out 
that  a  logical  result  of  his  system  is  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  trade  union,  what  power  is  to  stand 
against  reductions  in  wages,  down  to  the  lowest 
level  at  which  stop-watch  workmen  may  be  hired 
in  dull  times  by  that  portion  of  unscrupulous  and 
greedy  employers  which  exists  in  all  branches  of 
industry  1 

An  imminent  cause  of  a  break-down  in  applied 
stop-watch,  high  tension,  piecework  efficiency  lies 
in  the  graft  its  "differential  rate"  opens  up  for 
the  employer  on  the  employe.  The  highest  limit 
of  a  machine  and  its  human  operator  being  as- 
certained, to  be  entitled  to  the  bonus  above  the 
flat  wage,  this  high  point  or  one  closely  approach- 
ing it  must  be  reached  and  maintained  by  all 
employes  engaged  in  the  same  class  of  work. 
When  the  stint  is  not  reached  and  only  the  flat 
wage  consequently  paid,  the  result  may  be  a  con- 
fiscation by  the  employer  of  the  production  above 
the  usual  fair  day's  quantity.  Hear  Mr.  Taylor 
on  this  point:  "With  the  differential  rate,  if  for 


AND  INDUSTRIAL  EFFICIENCY       71 

any  reason  he  [the  workman]  fails  to  do  his  full 
task,  he  not  only  loses  the  large  extra  premium 
which  is  paid  for  complete  success,  but  in  ad- 
dition he  suffers  the  direct  loss  of  the  piece  price 
for  each  piece  by  which  he  falls  short."  Now, 
it  is  easy  for  the  work  to  "run  bad,"  making  it 
impossible  for  the  operative  to  attain  the  high 
limit.  This  is  the  case  in  the  textile  industry,  as 
found  on  investigation  by  the  trade  union.  Metal 
workers  find  in  the  variable  degree  of  hardness 
of  the  material  a  factor  which  baffles  records. 
Weather  counts  both  ways  in  out-door  work.  In 
all  such  cases,  who  is  to  decide  for  or  against  the 
worker  who  may  attribute  his  shortage  of  output 
to  causes  beyond  his  control?  With  no  trade 
union,  many  abuses  could  be  practiced  with  little 
effective  opposition. 

The  prospect  of  what  may  come  about  through 
the  introduction  of  this  system  brings  to  the  shop 
worker's  mind  unpleasant  recollections  of  what  he 
has  seen  taking  place  under  driving  foremen  and 
selfish  employers.  For  example,  there  is  Mr.  Tay- 
lor's  own  limited  view  of  the  moralities,  the  social 
and  patriotic  objects,  the  human  influences  possi- 
ble to  shop  work — an  edifying  conception,  given  in 
these  words:  "All  employes  should  bear  in  mind 
that  each  shop  exists  first,  last,  and  all  the  time 
for  the  purpose  of  paying  dividends  to  its  own- 
ers." Why,  then,  in  employing  labor  or  in  any 
other  transaction  should  the  employer  stop  short 


72  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

of  anything  that  will  not  send  him  to  jail?  Or, 
again  there  are  the  views  of  President  Harrah,  of 
the  Midvale  Company,  as  expressed  before  the 
Committee  on  Labor  of  the  House  of  Representa- 
tives in  1900:  "We  have  the  most  improved  kind 
of  machinery  now ;  but  we  make  it  a  rule  to  run  a 
machine  to  break."  "We  have  absolutely  no  re- 
gard for  machinery  or  for  men."  Or,  again, 
there  was  the  Triangle  Waist  Factory,  with  its 
speeded-up  sewing  machines,  the  operators  back 
to  back  in  rows  with  hardly  room  to  move,  the 
operating  room  doors  locked,  insufficient  exits, 
systems  of  fines — every  point  considered  and  cal- 
culated to  bring  dividends.  Every  point,  except 
the  shop  afire. 

Intensely  unpleasant  to  the  real  workingman  is 
the  caricature  of  the  workingman  brought  out  on 
the  stage  in  the-  first  scene  of  "Efficiency" — a 
loafer,  studying  how  to  avoid  fulfilling  his  obliga- 
tions with  an  employer.  Almost  equally  disagree- 
able is  Mr.  Taylor's  ideal  of  a  workman  as  pre- 
sented in  the  final  scenes  of  his  work — a  human 
automaton,  in  the  social  status  of  a  convict.  Nor 
has  Mr.  Taylor  been  at  all  successful  with  the 
other  leading  character  of  his  playlet — the  em- 
ployer. He  brings  him  on  the  boards  in  too  many 
disguises — as  Benevolence,  increasing  wages — as 
Science,  working  wonders  in  the  stage  properties 
of  bonus,  piecework,  and  stint ;  as  Political  Econ- 
omy saving  the  nation  a  lot  of  work — all  these, 


AND  INDUSTRIAL  EFFICIENCY       73 

only  to  let  this  hero  take  down  his  mask  in  the  last 
act  and  show  himself,  barefaced,  as  plain  Divi- 
dend Hunter. 

As  to  the  extent  to  which  the  practice  of  effi- 
ciency may  unsettle  trade  unionism,  in  the  present 
subdivision  of  trades  and  the  varying  levels  of 
skilled  and  unskilled  labor,  the  wage  workers 
hardly  need  to  be  overanxious.  It  takes  two  to 
five  years,  according  to  Mr.  Taylor,  to  get  appre- 
ciable returns  from  his  system,  and  then  it  may 
tumble  to  pieces,  like  a  house  of  cards,  as  it  seems 
to  have  done  at  Bethlehem.  Some  branches  of 
efficiency,  such  as  the  bricklaying,  require  such  a 
considerable  pyramid  of  a  force,  with  assistants 
at  stage  after  stage  in  the  work,  that  it  may  long 
continue  most  profitable  to  depend  on  just  brick- 
layers to  do  the  run  of  ordinary  jobs.  In  the  trade 
of  the  machinist  it  can  hardly  be  possible  to  abol- 
ish from  use  an  amount  of  skill  and  technical 
knowledge  that  forms  one  of  the  elements  of  the 
wealth  of  our  country,  simply  by  turning  over  to 
laborers  certain  movements  that  take  endless 
repetition.  Nor  are  our  well-laid  plans  for  indus- 
trial education  to  be  undone  in  a  day  by  the  stop- 
watch. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE  WAGE.EABNERS  AND  THE  JUDICIARY. 

To  "respect  .the  courts"  is  an  admonitory  call 
so  often  made  on  the  workingman  that  he  has 
formulated  for  general  consideration  a  counter- 
call.  He  cannot  condense  it  in  another  three 
words.  His  response  to  the  implied  criticism  ad- 
dressed him  might  properly  begin  with  some  in- 
quiry as  to  what  class  in  society  habitually  shows 
more  respect  than  his  own  for  the  judiciary  as  an 
institution.  Do  the  politicians,  for  instance  ?  Do 
the  "captains  of  industry"?  He  believes  that  in 
their  sphere  judges  ought  to  be  experts  and  ac- 
cordingly appreciated.  He  understands  that 
order,  that  prime  essential  to  society,  depends 
largely  on  obedience  to  the  bench.  He  knows  that 
as  the  law  is,  so  society  is  and  vice  versa,  and  that 
accordingly  as  the  law  is  well  or  badly  adminis- 
tered so  much  the  better  or  the  worse  for  all 
classes,  including  the  wage  workers.  To  these 
familiar  commonplace  generalities  he  assents, 
without  argument. 

But,  is  it  the  duty  of  the  workingman  so  to  rev- 
erence the  courts  that  he  should  regard  their  de- 
cisions as  above  the  range  of  his  discussion? 
Should  he  maintain  and  express  no  judgment  of 
his  own  on  his  constitutional  or  inherent  rights  ? 


AND  THE  JUDICIARY  75 

Queries  such  as  these  might  appear  absurd  were 
it  not  that  inexperienced  persons  often  make  a 
show  of  indignation  when  told  that  the  decision  of 
any  court  is  to  be  opposed.  "Why  did  you  not  obey 
the  court  and  so  avoid  making  yourself  liable  to 
a  jail  sentence?"  was  in  substance  asked  by  a 
woman  in  an  audience  which  had  been  addressed 
by  me  on  some  phases  of  labor's  rights.  Appar- 
ently she  regarded  questioning  any  court's  con- 
clusions as  disobedience  to  the  law  or  at  least  evi- 
dence of  a  lawless  spirit.  She  had  given  no 
weight  to  the  one  important  fact  that  an  appeal 
through  legal  form  is  a  justifiable  opposition  to 
a  court  possibly  in  error.  She  had  not  under- 
stood that  contesting  a  lower  court's  decision 
clear  up  to  the  highest  court,  especially  in  a  case 
involving  a  constitutional  right,  or  a  legal  point 
not  fully  settled,  might  be  a  patriotic  duty. 

To  a  considerable  extent,  ignorance,  akin  to  this 
woman's,  is  the  foundation  of  a  more  or  less  gen- 
eral impression,  which  organized  labor's  critics 
would  have  stand  for  public  opinion,  that  the 
American  workingman  is  "against  the  courts,"  is 
in  fact  in  the  habit  of  denouncing  and  disobeying 
them. 

What  is  true  in  this  charge  is  that  the  organized 
working-classes  are  of  necessity  at  the  present 
time  obliged  to  direct  the  attention  of  the  coun- 
try to  what  they  believe  are  errors  or  shortcom- 
ings in  certain  proceedings  of  law  courts  with  re- 


76  THE  WAGE  EARNEES 

gard  to  labor  questions  which  are  unsettled  and 
which,  it  now  seems,  can  only  be  settled  through 
a  social  process  involving  several  stages.  These 
questions  require  first  to  be  discussed  publicly. 
Their  reply  will  involve  defining  the  limits  within 
which  courts  may  act;  courts  are  not  to  encroach 
on  rights  of  the  citizen  which  will  be  clearly  estab- 
lished, and  they  are  to  be  assigned  their  unques- 
tionably proper  place  relative  to  the  lawmaking 
and  executive  departments  of  our  government. 
One  important  result  of  this  process  will  be  that  in 
their  judgments  the  courts  will  apply  principles  of 
human  rights  which  today  are  accepted  by  the  en- 
lightened majority,  not  only  of  this  country,  but 
all  civilized  countries. 

The  first  of  these  questions  is  the  matter  of  dis- 
cussing the  fallibility  of  the  courts  themselyes,  as 
especially  shown  in  the  inconsistency  of  their  find- 
ings on  the  problems  incident  to  the  development 
of  our  new  industrial  society.  Certain  points  in 
this  primary  inquiry  are  now  up  before  the  coun- 
try in  urgent  form.  Is  there  a  tendency  among 
our  judges  to  lag  behind  general  progress  in  the 
acceptance  of  certain  principles  of  sociology  true 
in  the  opinion  of  nearly  all  men  whose  daily  ex- 
periences or  studies  bring  before  their  minds  the 
social  effects  of  the  new  industrial  conditions! 
Are  those  " rights  of  persons,"  made  obvious  to 
the  working-class  by  the  facts  of  life  as  they  now 
are,  accorded  in  the  courts  equal  consideration 


AND  THE  JUDICIARY  77 

with  the  "rights  of  things/'  as  established  gen- 
erations ago,  when  the  worker  was  little  more  than 
a  dumb  and  dependent  chattel  ?  On  this  point,  the 
most  conspicuous  facts  as  regards  the  courts  can- 
not be  dwelt  upon  too  emphatically.  In  deciding 
cases  involving  labor's  claims,  a  judge  has  before 
him  in  every  instance  two  practically  contra- 
dictory sets  of  precedents.  He  may  give  primary 
importance  and  preponderant  weight  to  the  prece- 
dents immediately  affecting  human  rights,  the 
personal  rights  which  lie  in  the  category  that  prin- 
cipally concerns  the  masses;  or  he  may  take  the 
contrary  view,  from  another  chain  of  precedents 
that  legal  rights  are  for  the  most  part  concretely 
represented  in  property.  In  Man  vs.  The  Dollar, 
the  judge,  guided  by  a  line  of  legally  valid  prece- 
dents, may  be  inclined  to  award  judgment  to  a 
substance,  property,  in  contradistinction  to  what 
may  seem  to  him  to  be  comparatively  a  shadow, 
namely,  rights  disassociated  from  material  pos- 
sessions. 

When  the  wage  worker,  in  arguing  to  society 
his  cause  relative  to  the  courts,  has  established 
the  fact  of  the  fallibility  of  judges  and  of  the  reas- 
onableness of  his  query  as  to  a  tendency  existing 
among  them  to  follow  the  precedents  which  in  his 
opinion  stand  as  obstacles  to  the  just  protection 
of  the  lives  and  the  rights  of  the  masses  of  men,  he 
is  next  prepared  to  state  definitely  what  he  holds 
certain  of  these  rights  to  be.  As  a  good  and 


78  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

worthy  citizen,  he  is  ready  to  contend  for  such 
rights — in  the  courts,  in  the  public  forum,  and  at 
the  polls.  He  has  been  taught  that  a  right  worth 
having  is  worth  fighting  for,  and  that  a  right  neg- 
lected must  be  brought  forward  by  the  man  who 
ought  to  possess  and  exercise  it.  In  conducting 
this  struggle  the  wage  earner  surely  is  guilty  of 
no  impropriety  in  pointing  out  where,  in  his  opin- 
ion, judges  have  ignored  his  rights,  and  where 
their  action  has  been  a  violation  of  the  funda- 
mental principles  of  our  republic.  Moreover,  cer- 
tain of  these  rights  are  today  pressing  for  an  im- 
mediate and  definite  recognition.  One  of  them  is, 
the  wage  earner's  right  of  exercising  free  speech 
and  of  maintaining  a  free  press,  and  in  regard  to 
these  is  to  be  defined  the  just  limit  of  a  court's 
interference  with  a  citizen's  utterances,  in  spoken 
or  printed  word.  Very  important  practical  ques- 
tions next  follow  closely.  What  are  the  constitu- 
tional limits  to  a  court  injunction  in  labor  dis- 
putes! What  act  relative  to  an  order  from  the 
bench  constitutes  a  contempt  of  court?  Is  the 
wage  worker  to  exercise  freely  his  right  to  dis- 
pose of  his  labor  as  he  wills'?  Is  he  to  exercise 
his  right  to  control  his  purchasing  power  as  he 
wills?  How  far  may  he  go  in  inducing  another 
wage  earner  to  join  him  in  an  action  which  in  his 
judgment  promotes  benefits  to  both  ?  What  are  a 
union  man's  rights  on  the  highway?  May  an  or- 
ganization of  wage  earners  refuse  to  work  with 


AND  THE  JUDICIARY  79 

men  objectionable  to  them?  Is  it  a  crime  for  a 
group  of  men  to  do  that  which  it  is  legal  for  one  of 
their  number  to  do?  How  long  is  the  bench  to  be 
free  to  play  off  the  always  dubious  principle  of 
''freedom  of  contract"  against  the  manifest  and 
imperative  principle  of  "the  general  welfare,"  to 
the  destruction  of  many  forms  of  just  protection 
of  the  men,  women  and  children  engaged  in  indus- 
try! Until  these  questions  are  answered  authori- 
tatively, once  and  for  all,  organized  labor  will  be 
the  prey  of  combined  enemies  having  as  instru- 
ments shrewd  counsel  under  fee  and  as  legal  agen- 
cies courts  who  place  in  the  way  of  labor  what- 
ever barriers  can  be  formed  out  of  the  vestiges  of 
the  legal  compulsion  which  held  sway  when  labor 
was  hardly  above  the  status  of  serfdom. 

For  the  wage  worker  to  hold  that  courts  are 
fallible,  and  to  keep  the  fact  well  forward  in  con- 
tending for  what  he  regards  as  his  rights,  so  far 
from  manifesting  disrespect,  is  merely  acting 
upon  what  has  been  taught  him  by  the  State  in 
establishing  a  system  of  checks  in  the  hierarchy  of 
courts  as  well  as  by  the  constantly  differing  opin- 
ions of  judges  themselves.  The  gradations  of 
courts,  the  higher  possessing  revisionary  powers 
over  the  lower,  result  in  exhibiting  error  in  a 
large  percentage  of  the  lower  courts '  decisions,  or 
at  least  differences  in  the  practical  effect  of  their 
conclusions  as  compared  with  those  of  the  courts 
above  them.  Majority  rule  on  a  divided  bench 


80  THE  WAGE  EABNEES 

indicates  fallibility  in  one  of  the  parties  to  the  di- 
vision, and  in  the  course  of  a  session  of  a  court  of 
several  members  each  may  find  himself  in  the 
minority  on  one  or  more  decisions,  in  which  case 
he  is  entitled  to  regard  the  majority  as  fallible. 
To  organized  labor,  bringing  to  the  courts  ques- 
tions springing  from  modernized  industry,  the 
judges  have  furnished  continual  illustrations  of  in- 
adaptability either  to  one  another's  views  or  to 
prevailing  public  opinion.  Their  decisions  on  these 
questions  have  also  shown  their  tendencies  as  dis- 
putants to  place  an  emphasis  on  either  one  or  the 
other  amid  conflicting  principles.  The  series  of 
results  of  the  split-up  of  the  Court  of  Appeals  of 
New  York  in  1904  in  finding,  by  a  vote  of  four  to 
one,  that  the  eight-hour  act  passed  in  that  State  in 
1897  was  unconstitutional,  was  from  several 
points  of  view  worth  a  law-college  education  to 
the  labor  men  of  the  country.  Two  members  of 
the  court  regarded  the  act  as  an  interference  by 
the  Legislature  with  a  right  of  the  municipality, 
and  therefore  unconstitutional.  Two  others,  to 
whose  minds  it  deprived  an  individual  of  property 
without  due  process  of  law,  also  found  it  unconsti- 
tutional. But  the  fifth  judge,  accepting  it  as  a 
police  regulation  in  the  interest  of  public  health 
and  morality,  maintained  that  it  was  constitu- 
tional. Judicial  confusion  leaving  the  matter  in 
this  shape,  the  people  of  the  State  took  it  up  and 
by  the  aid  of  a  judge-proof  constitutional  amend- 


AND  THE  JUDICIARY  81 

ment  passed  an  eight-hour  act,  the  terms  of  which 
tallied  with  provisions  the  United  States  Supreme 
Court  had  declared  valid  in  the  Kansas  eight-hour 
law. 

On  the  likelihood  of  judges  varying  in  their 
views  of  elementary  legal  principles,  one  or  the 
other  of  which  by  this  time  ought  to  be  an  estab- 
lished basis  of  our  public  policy,  the  judicial 
course  on  the  New  York  ten-hour  bakery  act  is 
witness.  By  a  vote  of  four  to  three,  the  State 
Court  of  Appeals  held  that  the  statute  was  a 
proper  exercise  of  the  police  power  and  therefore 
constitutional.  But  in  the  United  States  Supreme 
Court  five  judges  to  four  held  the  law  to  be  un- 
constitutional on  the  ground  that  it  attempted  an 
arbitrary  interference  with  the  freedom  of  con- 
tract. 

The  gist  of  the  lesson  to  the  wage  earner  in 
these  various  decisions  is  that  the  principles  of 
the  law  which  may  be  invoked  in  regard  to  such 
statutes  are  but  few  and  easily  understood,  while 
each  is  an  instrument  to  be  grasped  and  employed 
with  a  desired  effect  by  interested  litigants. 

Not  only  does  one  see  plainly  in  these  typical 
cases  that  judges  are  fallible,  but  also  that  they 
may  be  swayed  by  personal  associations  and  in- 
clinations. That  being  the  fact,  the  aspirations 
for  justice  of  the  wage-working  masses  may  be 
sufficient  motive  and  warrant  in  endeavoring  to 
establish  their  own  views  of  justice. 


82  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

Their  opponents  may  reasonably  set  out  to 
demonstrate  that  the  principles  of  a  law  which  the 
wage  earners  propose  cannot  be  aligned  with  rea- 
son and  justice,  that  the  law  would  lead  to  heavier 
burdens  on  society,  or  that  under  it  the  wage- 
earners  themselves  would  be  the  chief  sufferers. 
But  to  charge  the  wage  earners  with  disrespect 
for  the  judiciary  because  they  criticise,  even  in 
severe  terms,  the  views  held  by  certain  judges  is 
diverting  attention  from  the  essential  subject  to 
an  incidental  point.  It  is  begging  the  question. 
The  wage  earner  may  pertinently  call  attention  to 
the  fact,  recorded  in  Bigelow's  "  Overruled 
Cases,"  that  as  far  back  as  1873  the  appellate 
courts  had  overruled  nearly  ten  thousand  of  their 
own  decisions.  Yet  he  could  still  respect  the 
courts,  accordingly. 

Impervious  to  any  superstition  that  there  are 
principles  in  law  or  government  which  he  may  not 
presume  to  discuss,  as  may  other  laymen,  the 
wage  worker  is  prepared  to  assert  his  rights  to 
free  speech  and  a  free  press.  To  bring  comment 
on  this  principle  at  once  to  a  concrete  point,  refer- 
ence may  be  made  to  the  opinion  regarding  it  offi- 
cially rendered  by  Chief  Justice  Shepard,  of  the 
Supreme  Court,  District  of  Columbia.  Referring 
to  the  constitutional  inhibition  of  any  abridg- 
ment of  the  freedom  of  speech  or  the  press, 
Justice  Shepard  said  from  the  bench,  with  regard 
to  an  injunction  order  issued  by  a  lower  court  of 


AND  THE  JUDICIARY  83 

the  District,  that  acts  of  publication  by  the  de- 
fendants which  violated  parts  of  the  lower  court's 
decree  exceeding  its  constitutional  powers  were 
not  causes  for  legal  penalities.  He  quoted  Justice 
Miller,  of  the  United  States  Supreme  Court,  as  de- 
ciding that  a  decree  punishing  a  man  for  contempt 
of  court  because  he  refused  to  comply  with  an 
order  which  the  court  had  no  authority  to  make, 
was  void.  Now,  organized  labor  men  have  learned 
that  in  injunctions  issued  against  them  there  may 
be,  not  only  quite  a  list  of  acts  forbidden  them 
which  were  already  illegal  and  which  they  had  no 
intention  of  committing,  but  also  a  number  of  acts 
which  they  are  confident  a  reviewing  court  will  de- 
clare legal,  which,  indeed,  courts  have  repeatedly 
recognized  as  legal,  and  in  such  case  the  labor  men 
stand  firmly  on  their  rights  as  they  know  them, 
and  to  that  extent,  driven  to  an  extremity,  they 
may  disobey  a  court's  orders.  When  a  labor  offi- 
cial, defending  as  in  duty  bound  the  rights  of  the 
members  of  his  organization  as  citizens,  makes  the 
declaration  that  if  a  court  should  enjoin  him  from 
doing  something  he  had  a  legal,  constitutional, 
and  moral  right  to  do,  he  would  violate  the  injunc- 
tion, he  is  actually  upholding  the  law  and  showing 
his  regard  for  what  is  to  be  the  final  action  of  the 
higher  courts.  When  he  declares  before  the  coun- 
try that  he  will  utter  his  deliberate  and  conscien- 
tious thought,  through  speech  or  in  print,  he  is 
positive  he  is  within  his  constitutional  right.  He 


84  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

has  legal  opinions  in  fortifying  numbers  to  the 
effect  that  no  court  can  forbid  his  uttering  his 
thoughts,  though  naturally  he  expects  to  abide  by 
the  consequences  of  his  speaking  or  publishing  in 
so  doing.  He  pits  his  conception  of  a  fundamental 
social  principle  against  that  of  the  lower  courts, 
confident  that  the  judgment  of  the  higher  courts, 
and  certain  that  the  judgment  of  time,  will  be  on 
his  side. 

Organized  labor  asks  this  country  today  to  lay 
down  the  limitations  of  the  courts  in  the  matter  of 
injunctions  in  labor  disputes.  It  wishes  to  know 
where  it  stands  with  regard  to  points  continually 
coming  up  in  judicial  injunctions.  It  wants  to  get 
rid  of  the  burden  of  going  up  again  and  again  to 
the  higher  courts  to  have  inhibitions  eliminated 
from  injunctions  that  have  been  repeatedly  ad- 
judged as  beyond  the  powers  of  courts  to  issue. 
Labor  officials  nowadays  on  reading  a  fresh  in- 
junction, probably  drawn  up  by  an  employer's  at- 
torney and  merely  signed  by  the  judge,  can  them- 
selves blue-pencil  off  the  clauses  which  a  higher 
court  will  declare  null  and  void.  But  meantime, 
during  a  formal  hearing  or  appeal,  labor  will  have 
lost  its  rightful  position  in  the  impending  dis- 
pute. Its  opponents  will  have  enjoyed  the  unfair 
advantage  of  using  a  court  as  their  aid.  To  or- 
ganized labor,  the  imperfections  in  court  work, 
only  some  of  which  have  been  referred  to,  form  a 
greater  obstacle  to  reaching  industrial  peace  than 


AND  THE  JUDICIAEY  85 

the  strength  of  the  union's  opponents  in  disputes. 
If  the  employers  defeat  a  strike,  the  union  sees  the 
cause  of  its  set-back  to  be  in  the  labor  market  or 
in  its  own  defects,  or  other  obvious  cause  which 
time  may  remedy.  But  if  the  courts  defeat  a 
strike,  the  employers  gain  only  a  respite  and  both 
the  employes  engaged  and  their  fellow-unionists 
are  embittered.  Eventually  they  become  stronger 
in  unionism,  less  disposed  to  friendly  overtures, 
and  often  they  turn  their  attention  mainly  to 
forms  of  radical  relief. 

Usually  labor  obeys  injunctions.  Of  forty-six 
issued  in  Massachusetts  in  eleven  years  in  labor 
cases,  in  nine  instances  only  was  there  disobedi- 
ence, and  in  only  one  of  these  by  persons  named 
in  the  injunction.  But  this  is  not  the  point  on 
which  pertinent  argument  today  turns.  It  is  only 
since  1890  that  courts  in  equity  have  by  means  of 
injunctions  been  so  encroaching  on  theretofore 
recognized  rights  of  labor  that  the  necessity  has 
arisen  to  make  clear  the  rightful  limits  of  the 
powers  of  judges  so  acting.  Contemporaneously 
with  agitation  and  inquiry  in  this  respect,  other 
legal  disqualifications  of  labor  in  the  United 
States  have  perforce  engaged  the  attention  and 
enlisted  the  reformatory  efforts  cf  organized 
workmen.  Consequently  the  wage  earners  are 
urgently  asking  questions  of  the  courts  and  the 
law-givers.  If  Great  Britain  can  so  arrange  that 
trade  union  funds  are  protected  from  legalized 


86  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

raids  in  consequence  of  labor  disputes,  it  seems 
reasonable  to  look  for  similar  protection  in  our 
country.    If  picketing  during  a  lock-out  or  a  strike 
is  recognized  as  legal  by  the  United  States  Su- 
preme Court,  it  might  be  grounds  for  prohibiting 
a  city  council  from  passing  an  ordinance  forbid- 
ding it.    If  the  men  of  conspicuous  legal  capabili- 
ties who  compose  the  Judiciary  Committee  of  the 
national  House  of  Representatives  can  frame  a 
bill  defining  conspiracy  and  taking  away  from  the 
courts   the   power   to   issue   injunctions    against 
unions  acting  by  orderly  methods  in  furtherance 
of  a  labor  dispute,  why  cannot  such  a  bill  become 
a  law  and  be  observed  by  the  courts  f    If  compen- 
sation to  workmen  for  injuries  sustained  in  the 
course  of  employment  can  be  adopted  as  an  indus- 
trial principle  by  the  other  great  nations  of  the 
earth,  it  is  a  strange  commentary  on  our  national 
intellectual  status  if  our  people  tolerate  legal  ob- 
stacles to  its  enforcement  here.    If  organizers  of 
the  proletariat,  preaching  doctrines  subversive  of 
its  government,  can  hold  meetings  everywhere  in 
the  German  Empire,  it  ought  to  be  made  a  cer- 
tainty that  our  trade  union  organizers,  teaching 
principles  strictly  in  accordance  with  the  constitu- 
tion and  the  laws  of  this  country,  could  not  be  or- 
dered out  of  Pennsylvania  or  West  Virginia  min- 
ing or  iron  manufacturing  districts  by  sheriffs  or 
constables.    If  laws  limiting  the  hours  of  labor  for 


AND  THE  JUDICIARY  87 

women  are  held  to  be  constitutional  in  one  State, 
it  ought  to  be  taken  for  granted — though  it  can- 
not— that  similar  laws  should  be  constitutional  in 
other  States.  Now,  on  all  the  points  thus  brought 
under  our  observation,  the  demand  arises  for  the 
establishment  of  foundation  principles  in  the  stat- 
utes, to  be  consistently  observed  and  uniformly 
administered  by  the  public  officials.  Who  can 
rightly  blame  labor  for  decrying  the  defects  of  the 
laws  that  fail  to  extend  to  it  the  protection  given 
in  other  countries  f  Is  there  any  reasonable  basis 
for  wonder  that  labor  entertains  projects  of  itself 
directly  influencing  the  law  through  its  votes  ? 

Labor  is  not  listening  to  the  voice  of  anarchy. 
It  would  replace  the  present  anarchy  by  stable 
laws.  For  better  or  worse,  it  would  have  the  ques- 
tions affecting  labor  which  will  not  down,  and 
which  have  baffled  our  legislatures  and  our  courts, 
answered  definitely,  one  way  or  another,  for  or 
against  labor's  convictions. 

The  bench  in  America  has  been  the  last  institu- 
tion to  awaken  to  the  greatest  of  all  modern  prob- 
lems. To  indicate  how  the  attitude  of  the  courts 
with  respect  to  this  problem  is  regarded  by  the 
leaders  of  a  most  conservative  movement,  this  ex- 
cerpt from  an  editorial  in  "The  Survey"  may  aid : 

"Those  who  feel  that  they  have  a  grievance 
against  the  courts  because  of  their  attitude  on  so- 


88  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

cial  and  economic  questions  may  choose  among 
several  lines  of  action.  One  is  to  educate  the 
judges  on  the  particular  questions  in  which  they 
are  interested.  Another  is  to  seek,  through  the  re- 
call and  similar  means,  to  keep  the  courts  in  har- 
mony with  public  sentiment.  Still  another  is  to 
remove  from  the  courts  the  power  to  interpret 
statutes  and  to  determine  their  constitutionality, 
leaving  the  former  function  to  some  administra- 
tive department,  and  the  latter,  as  in  England,  to 
the  legislature. ' ' 

When  consideration  of  such  sentiments  and 
such  propositions  is  seriously  given  in  a  magazine 
of  foremost  standing  in  the  circles  whose  first  aim 
is  to  systematize  and  give  the  highest  efficiency  to 
the  philanthropic  impulses  of  the  community, 
rather  than  to  economic  readjustment,  it  serves  to 
show  that  intelligent  opinion  among  those  inti- 
mately acquainted  with  needs  affecting  the  de- 
prived classes  is,  not  that  fault  is  to  be  found  with 
organized  labor,  but  that  general  disappointment 
has  been  caused  through  the  backwardness  and,  in 
prominent  cases,  perversity  of  the  courts. 

It  can  never  be  overlooked  by  labor  that  the 
struggle  in  which  it  is  engaged  to  obtain  a  full 
exercise  of  its  rights  is  one  running  through  the 
ages  and  yet  but  in  part  completed.  Every  step 
of  its  progress  has  been  disputed  by  power  in- 
trenched, not  only  in  privilege  but  in  the  law,  as 
pronounced  by  the  courts.  Almost  invariably 


AND  THE  JUDICIARY  89 

judges  have  personified  the  dominant  social  force 
of  the  time.  In  this  country,  the  hope  is  not  in 
vain,  the  final  power  is  to  be  in  its  educated 
masses,  enlightened  as  to  common  rights,  faithful 
to  broad  conceptions  of  justice,  with  law-making 
sufficiently  pliable  to  advance  with  progressive  so- 
cial and  economic  conditions,  and  with  courts  and 
the  people  in  mutual  confidence. 


CHAPTEE  VI. 

THE    WAGE    EARNERS    AND    THE    MINIMUM    WAGE   FOR 
WOMEN  AND  CHILDREN/ 

He  is  no  imaginary  figure  in  industry,  the  fair- 
minded  employer.  His  influence  has  its  weight 
with  his  fellow-capitalists,  with  labor  organized  or 
unorganized,  and  with  the  community  in  general, 
in  times  both  of  industrial  peace  and  industrial 
disturbance.  His  appearance  on  the  scene  when- 
ever he  has  an  opportunity  to  express  his  views 
and  a  hope  to  attain  a  conscientious  purpose  is 
regularly  looked  forward  to  with  certainty  by  ex- 
perienced representatives  of  labor.  He  is  at  hand 
on  occasions  when  employers  are  called  on  by 
employes  to  act  like  men.  He  may,  it  is  true,  in 
instances  be  over-sentimental,  or  animated  with 
Utopian  ideals,  or  perhaps  a  shade  biased  through 
some  form  of  partisanship.  But  he  has  shown 
himself  active,  it  may  be  ventured,  in  all  reform 
groups  in  every  country.  He  has  been  welcomed, 
and  given  lead,  in  radical  working-class  political 
movements,  especially  in  Europe.  He  has  allied 
himself  with  reform  associations,  political  or 
otherwise,  in  every  community.  Frequently,  in 
America,  with  the  national  pride  in  practicability, 
he  avows  himself  simply  a  business  man,  deter- 
mined to  act  justly  through  policy,  if  from  no 


AND  THE  MINIMUM  WAGE  91 

higher  motive.  The  truth  is  that  the  spirit  of  an- 
tagonism toward  injustice  is  aroused  in  him  as  it 
is  in  the  sincere  spokesman  for  labor,  the  mind 
and  heart  of  either  carrying  the  man  above  nar- 
row, or  class,  considerations.  The  wage  worker 
who  has  been  chosen  by  his  comrades  as  official 
defender  of  the  rights  of  labor,  himself  perform- 
ing his  duties  from  honorable  motives,  recognizes 
and  welcomes  sincerity,  candor,  and  humanity 
when  shown  on  the  employers '  side.  And  why  not 
expect  these  qualities  thus  to  come  into  play  I  With 
positions  reversed,  either  representative  employer 
or  delegated  wage  worker,  hearkening  to  the 
promptings  of  his  spirit,  cannot  avoid,  finally, 
within  himself,  hearing  both  sides,  weighing  testi- 
mony, ranging  himself  with  the  right,  and,  if  no 
more  than  secretly,  giving  assent  to  his  real  con- 
victions. The  wrench  comes  in  permitting  the 
inner  man  to  speak  out.  It  is  one  of  the  hopes  of 
human  nature  that  there  are  fair-minded  employ- 
ers who,  rejecting  the  special  pleading  of  their 
class  counsel,  and  braving  the  dangers  of  mistakes, 
choose  to  err,  if  at  all,  through  experiment  in  new 
forms  of  justice,  or  generosity,  or  good-will,  rather 
than  to  fortify  themselves  behind  inflexible  law, 
vague  and  time-worn  economic  maxims,  or  the 
traditional  advantages  of  wealth  as  against  mere 
labor. 

It  is  with  the  fair-minded  employer  that  we  can 
discuss  with  especial  profit  the  more  salient  fea- 


92  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

tures  of  this  comparatively  new  question  in  the 
United  States — minimum  wages  for  women  and 
children. 

This  employer,  on  his  part,  and  we,  on  ours,  are 
to  avoid  the  tactics  of  bellicose  controversialists. 
Should  he  on  some  points  decide  to  differ  with  us 
we  are  not  to  affront  him  with  opprobrious  epi- 
thets. As  we  proceed  to  outline  the  moderate 
form  of  the  minimum  wage  to  which  at  present  we 
give  our  support,  he  will  not,  we  feel  sure,  in  his 
considerateness,  flout  us  as  "trumpeting"  a  new- 
fangled economic  philanthropy,  as  advocating 
"political  cure-alls,"  as  making  a  general  applica- 
tion in  all  trades  and  callings  of  minimum  wage 
laws,  or  as  "neglecting  the  injunctions  of  the 
catechism. ' ' 

First,  then,  for  what  state  of  things,  and  for 
whom,  is  the  minimum  wage  proposed? 

With  this  query  arises  before  our  soberest  judg- 
ment the  plaint  of  feeble,  struggling  poverty  to 
society.  Between  the  two  extremes  of  the 
optimistic  sociological  expert's  positive  affirma- 
tion that  "never  in  the  history  of  the  world  was 
labor  better  off"  and  the  pessimistic  sociological 
expert's  equally  confident  assertion  that  "the 
masses  of  the  wage  workers  earn  insufficient  to 
maintain  themselves  above  some  form  of  pau- 
perism," many  shades  of  opinion  are  entertained 
on  the  subject.  But,  not  losing  ourselves  in 
sweeping  generalities,  can  we  not,  in  forming  our 


AND  THE  MINIMUM  WAGE  93 

opinion,  depend  upon  systematic  investigations 
made  in  certain  occupations  by  competent  ob- 
servers, whose  recorded  reports  bear  the  impress 
of  truth,  and  decide  also  that  conditions  in  similar 
grades  of  labor,  as  testified  to  by  other  inquirers, 
cannot  be  very  different? 

Carefully  made  statements  concerning  the  con- 
ditions of  labor  come  to  us  in  the  "  surveys "  of 
life  taken  in  industrial  centres,  in  the  census 
tables,  in  the  summaries  of  special  investigators 
in  selected  occupations,  in  the  official  reports  of 
trade  unions  and  labor  bureaus,  and  undoubtedly 
on  occasions  of  labor  disputes  in  the  newspaper 
and  magazine  articles  written  by  trained  observ- 
ers required  by  their  vigilant  principals  to  give 
faithful  reports  of  the  events  and  conditions  they 
have  witnessed.  We  need  not  in  these  pages  essay 
the  task  of  detailed  exposition  of  the  generally 
accepted  findings  of  these  media  of  information 
with  regard  to  certain  categories  of  labor  in 
America.  If  the  many  volumes  in  the  "Keport  on 
Condition  of  Woman  and  Child  Wage  Earners  in 
the  United  States,*'  issued  during  the  last  three 
years,  do  not  carry  conviction  that  there  is  woful 
poverty  and  destitution  in  the  ranks  of  these 
feebler  workers,  especially  in  the  textile  occupa- 
tions, among  laundry  and  garment  workers,  in  the 
glass  industry,  and  in  the  grade  of  stores  and 
factories  employing  mostly  the  young  or  less 
capable  classes  of  hands,  the  conclusion  must  be 


94  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

that  the  reader  is  proof  against  truths  to  him  un- 
welcome. The  pitiful  level  to  which  the  mode  of 
living  among  unskilled  and  helpless  wage  workers 
must  fall  in  certain  occupations  is  to  be  plainly 
seen,  when,  as  expressed  in  the  Massachusetts 
"Report  of  the  Commission  on  Minimum  Wage 
Boards,"  "the  rate  of  wages  depends  to  a  large 
degree  upon  the  personal  equation  of  employers 
and  upon  the  helplessness  of  their  employes."  It 
must  be  the  desperate  impoverishment  of  a  whole 
class  of  workers  that  sends  young  boys  to  slate- 
picking  at  mines  when  the  fact  is  known  that  "the 
average  boy  under  sixteen  years  in  a  coal-breaker 
takes  something  over  three  times  as  much  risk  as 
the  adult  of  losing  his  life."  In  1911,  thirty-eight 
boys  and  youths  under  age  were  killed  by  accident 
in  the  bituminous  mines  of  Pennsylvania,  and 
eighty-nine  in  the  anthracite  regions.  So  often 
have  "home"  workers  in  tenement  districts  of 
great  cities  been  written  up  for  the  public,  grown 
callous  perhaps,  that  now,  to  prove  that  familiar 
abuses  still  exist,  reproductions  of  photographs 
are  printed  with  but  a  few  lines  of  text — photo- 
graphs of  single-room  "homes"  where  the  whole 
family,  down  to  five-year-old  little  ones,  "break 
threads"  for  sewing  machine  operators,  or 
"knot"  artificial  feathers,  or  sew  the  tops  of  the 
legs  and  arms  of  dolls,  "forty-eight  for  five 
cents,"  or  pick  nuts,  a  mother  and  two  daughters 
of  six  and  eight  years  earning  together  at  this 


AND  THE  MINIMUM  WAGE  95 

work  three  dollars  a  week.  The  mass  strikes  of 
recent  years  in  the  great  cities  have  brought  out 
startling  testimony  of  the  life-destroying  priva- 
tions of  a  considerable  percentage  of  the  working- 
class  population  engaged  in  the  industries  affected. 
When  we  have  the  broad  pictures  of  poverty  drawn 
upon  our  minds  by  these  and  similar  significant 
data,  it  would  be  an  unnecessary  repetition  here 
to  set  forth  the  categorical  bases  of  our  argument 
through  a  mass  of  classified  particulars. 

Employers  in  general  to-day  recognize  the  grav- 
ity-like tendency  of  wages  to  fall,  especially  in  the 
sweated  trades,  which  at  times  leads  to  strikes  in 
the  mass.  Fair-minded  employers,  deploring  it, 
show  themselves  willing  to  assist  in  obviating  this 
tendency.  They  stand  aside  from  the  sort  of  capi- 
talists who  in  their  business  seek  only  dividends. 
But  they  are  handicapped  by  the  continuity  of  the 
conditions  of  employment  that  especially  manifest 
themselves  in  the  persistency  of  this  trend  down- 
ward. The  demoralizing  procedure  repeats  itself 
despite  attempts  to  arrest  it  definitely.  A  great 
strike  in  an  underpaid  occupation  having  to  an 
extent  succeeded,  unscrupulous  employers  at  the 
earliest  opportunity  begin  testing  the  labor  mar- 
ket to  ascertain  its  points  of  weakness.  They 
break  the  trade  agreement  in  one  or  another  of  its 
provisions,  their  harassed  employes  reluctant  to 
quarrel.  Competition  thus  begun  spreads  in  the 
industry  in  proportion  to  the  inability  of  the  union 


96  THE  WAGE  EAKNEKS 

to  fight.  In  time,  often  after  a  brief  period  of 
equal  wages,  the  baleful  conditions  against  which 
the  wage  workers  struck  are  re-established.  Fol- 
lowing a  stage  of  miserable  pay  and  long  hours 
comes  again  renewed  striking,  with  perhaps  fail- 
ure for  the  employes,  or  if  they  succeed  they  win 
agreements  only  to  see  them  broken  in  the  first 
dull  season  by  the  same  set  of  grasping  employers 
who  have  always  taken  unfair  advantage  of  their 
needs.  This  is  the  round  of  events  in  the  wage 
struggle  of  the  industry.  Unfortunately,  the  or- 
ganization that  carries  on  the  striking  is  in  cases 
unsubstantial.  The  cessation  from  work  partakes 
in  part  the  features  of  a  strike,  in  part  those  of  a 
revolt  against  society.  In  some  occupations, 
again,  there  is  little  possibility  of  anything  like  a 
strike.  In  either  case,  in  the  unstable  state  of  the 
unskilled  labor  market,  the  fair  employer  con- 
cerned is  a  chief  sufferer.  Among  the  last  resort- 
ing to  a  lowered  scale,  he  is  among  the  first  to  help 
restore  a  living  rate.  Therefore,  to-day,  he  is, 
with  fitting  determination,  looking  about  for  a 
scheme  that  may  bring  a  regulator  of  wages  for 
the  protection  of  himself  and  his  employes.  Is  he, 
or  is  he  not,  to  find  it  in  a  minimum  wage? 

We  of  the  union  side  who  advocate  this  mini- 
mum wage  law  are  also  seeking  a  supplementary 
wage  regulator,  to  be  employed  for  the  two 
obviously  defenseless  classes,  the  women  and  the 
children  in  the  lowest  paid  occupations,  the  same 


AND  THE  MINIMUM  WAGE  97 

as  unionists  found  supplementary  to  unionism  a 
legal  regulator  of  wages  and  hours  for  govern- 
ment employes.  In  studying  a  statutory  minimum 
wage,  we  are  willing  to  weigh  duly  any  objections 
of  opponents  that  have  the  appearance  of  validity. 
"Forcibly  to  regulate  wages,"  we  are  warned, 
"will  destroy  the  basis  of  the  right  of  contract 
upon  which  our  present  industrial  civilization  has 
been  founded."  But  we  must  ask  the  critic  who 
raises  this  argument  to  reflect  upon  the  various 
spheres  of  social  activity  in  which  the  regime  of 
contract  does  not  now  prevail.  Some  forms  of 
contract,  he  knows,  are  forbidden  by  the  constitu- 
tion. No  one  may  contract  to  commit  or  condone 
crime,  or  to  establish  slavery,  even  to  enslave  him- 
self. Employes  of  the  government  have  by  no 
means  the  same  liberty  of  contract  as  other  citi- 
zens. Contract  is  in  notable  respects  not  free  to 
dependents  on  society.  The  actual  legal  status  of 
all  the  minors  in  this  republic  is  that  they  are 
primarily  wards  of  the  state.  Parents  may  not 
abuse  them,  or  neglect  them,  to  their  mental  or 
moral  detriment,  or  otherwise  work  them  injury. 
The  State  imperatively  imposes  on  parents  the 
obligation  to  give  their  children  a  certain  school- 
ing. It  fixes  an  age  below  which  minors  may  not 
be  hired  out  to  work.  With  women,  also,  the  free 
play  for  contract  is  much  less  than  with  men.  The 
Federal  Supreme  Court  in  handing  down  its  de- 
cision in  the  Oregon  ten-hour  case,  said  that 


98  THE  WAGE  EAENEES 

woman  "has  been  looked  upon  in  the  courts  as 
needing  special  care,  that  her  rights  may  be  pre- 
served." The  argument  of  another  court,  that  a 
woman  must  remain  free  to  contract  to  work,  in  a 
factory,  as  many  hours  a  day  as  she  wills,  was 
ruled  unsound. 

Freedom  of  contract  not  being  absolute,  the 
question  of  its  just  or  socially  beneficial  marginal 
line  presents  in  practice  a  constant  dilemma.  All- 
comprehensive  dogmatism  here  obviously  fails. 
Principles,  precedents,  maxims  are  at  variance. 
The  actual  marginal  line  shifts  back  or  forth,  rela- 
tively with  prevailing  opinion.  This  is  governed 
by  circumstances.  As  to  the  minimum  wage,  the 
query  to-day  becomes,  Shall  the  state  dictate,  in 
peculiar  but  important  circumstances,  terms  and 
conditions  of  service  beyond  those  relating  to 
hours,  safety,  sanitation,  compensation  for  in- 
juries, and  kindred  phases  of  protection? — with 
respect  to  all  of  which  the  marginal  line  has  in  the 
course  of  industrial  evolution  been  pushed  further 
afield  upon  the  domain  of  abstract  liberty. 

Can  any  special  reasons  be  offered  by  govern- 
ment for  interfering  in  the  rates  of  wages?  To 
this,  the  reply  may  in  part  be  arrived  at  by  con- 
templating the  effects  upon  the  state  (society 
organized  for  the  purposes  of  government)  in 
the  case  of  wages  insufficient  to  maintain  wage 
earners  independently  of  public  assistance. 
Surely,  if  society  is  continuously  to  be  called  on  to 


AND  THE  MINIMUM  WAGE  99 

piece  out  the  cost  of  the  maintenance  of  a  class  of 
its  members,  it  has  a  just  and  serious  concern  in 
all  the  conditions  of  the  labor  of  that  class.  It 
might  be  better — at  times  assuredly  would  be  bet- 
ter— to  support  entirely  non-self-sustaining  per- 
sons rather  than  to  permit  them,  through  their 
underpaid  labor,  at  once  to  semi-pauperize  them- 
selves and  to  put  in  jeopardy,  through  their  de- 
structive competition,  the  wage-rates  and,  conse- 
quently, the  well-being  of  their  fellow-workers  in 
general,  who  usually  obtain  a  higher  scale.  Here, 
regarding  its  especial  wards,  the  state,  mindful 
above  all  of  a  defense  of  its  own  future,  might 
prescribe  extraordinary  protective  measures. 

"We  are  asked  to  consider  carefully,  in  objec- 
tion to  the  minimum  wage,  the  fact  that  "at  its 
recent  convention  the  American  Federation  of 
Labor  declared  that  a  uniform  legal  scale  of  com- 
pensation for  work  and  services  would  mean  the 
abandonment  of  its  fundamental  principles,  that 
workers  own  their  labor  power,  and  that  they 
alone,  acting  as  individuals  or  voluntary  associa- 
tions, have  the  sole  right  to  set  the  price  and 
bargain  for  the  same."  To  this,  in  the  union 
sense,  we  agree.  The  workers  here  referred  to 
are,  can  in  fact  only  be,  able-bodied  adult  males- 
independent  citizens,  capable  as  a  class  of  main- 
taining their  rights  and  defending  their  interests. 
The  wardship  of  the  law  touches  them  lightly. 
Yet,  exceptions  exist  to  the  principle  enunciated 


100  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

in  the  resolution.  A  desired  rate  of  wages  is 
enforced  by  statute  on  public  works.  In  railroad 
and  mining  work,  maximum  legal  hours  are,  in 
instances,  prescribed.  Militant  labor  in  these 
cases  adds  to  its  own  bargaining  abilities  the 
powers  of  the  law.  Moreover,  were  we  to  con- 
tinue argument  on  the  point,  attention  would  nec- 
essarily be  given  to  that  much-exploited  tenet  of 
non-unionism,  the  proposition  that,  in  all  circum- 
stances, a  worker  owns  his  own  labor  power,  with 
the  sole  right  to  set  its  price. 

So  much  for  basic  principles.  In  practice,  it  is 
not  a  certainty  that  a  legal  minimum  must  tend  to 
become  a  maximum.  A  legal  rate  of  interest  exists 
concurrently  with  a  wide  play  in  market  rates, 
above  as  well  as  below  the  statutory  percentage. 
The  legal  minimum  of  wage  for  child  labor  sends 
no  young  boys  to  work  from  the  well-to-do  classes. 
A  low  legal  minimum  of  wages  for  locomotive 
engineers  could  not  break  down  their  present 
scale,  though  their  ranks  are  open  to  non-union- 
ists. All  union  wages  are  the  result,  not  of  laws, 
but  of  the  cohesive  power  of  union  members 
exerted  in  the  labor  market.  Illustrations,  these, 
of  tendencies  wherever  there  is  strength  more 
than  counter-balancing  the  possibility  of  accepting 
the  conditions  of  weakness.  Moreover,  if  we  are 
to  take  facts  in  lieu  of  prophecies,  where  the  mini- 
mum wage  has  been  tried  it  has  had  the  effect 
generally  of  raising  wages.  In  the  "Outlook," 


AND  THE  MINIMUM  WAGE          101 

January  11,  1913,  in  an  article  on  "How  a  Mini- 
mum Wage  Law  Has  Worked,"  these  statements 
are  made  as  to  the  statute  in  Australia :  A  tempo- 
rary provision  when  first  enacted,  it  has  been  re- 
newed five  times.  "None  of  the  predicted  evils 
has  followed  the  act.  Employers  as  well  as  em- 
ployes welcome  it.  It  has  apparently  not  increased 
the  cost  of  production,  although  it  has  increased 
wages.  Efficiency,  however,  it  has  increased.  It 
has  not  only  reduced  the  number  of  those  who  are 
on  the  margin  of  dependency ;  it  has  saved  honest 
employers  from  dishonest  and  underhanded  com- 
petition in  arrangements  with  wage  earners." 
There  has  been  no  "leveling  down." 

Public  attention  has  been  called  in  the  following 
words  to  my  own  views  relative  to  wages  and  the 
American  standard  of  living :  * '  John  Mitchell  and 
other  authorities  put  the  annual  family  minimum 
living  wage  at  $600  a  year.  The  average  family 
wage  in  Massachusetts  is  shown  by  the  latest  cen- 
sus to  be  $800,  or  $200  more  than  the  necessary 
family  wage  accepted  by  economists."  To  pre- 
vent acceptance  as  a  fact  of  this  misquotation  of 
what  I  said  ten  years  ago  on  this  point,  I  repeat, 
correctly,  the  part  of  the  passage  referred  to 
which  contained  the  thought  now  applicable  to  the 
minimum  wage  proposition  ("Organized  Labor," 
p.  118) :  "In  cities  of  over  one  hundred  thousand, 
and  especially  in  cities  of  over  half  a  million,  $600 
would,  in  my  opinion,  be  insufficient  to  maintain 


102  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

this  standard  for  unskilled  workingmen. '  '  This 
estimate  being  behind  the  times  by  a  decade,  how 
much  must  be  added  to  it  through  the  increased 
cost  of  commodities  meanwhile?  The  $800  aver- 
age of  the  census  for  Massachusetts,  a  level  made 
high  by  the  larger  wages  of  the  skilled  and  the 
well-placed  workers,  would  fail  to  provide  com- 
forts and  savings  for  the  unskilled  in  general  in 
the  cities,  many  of  whom  earn  several  hundred 
dollars  less  than  the  $800. 

In  the  course  of  an  address  on  the  new  Massa- 
chusetts minimum  wage  law,  one  of  its  critics  in- 
advertently makes  two  prophecies:  (1)  It  will  not 
be  operative;  (2)  It  will  be  operative,  to  the  detri- 
ment of  employers,  employes,  and  the  State.  In- 
cidentally, this  critic  attributes  to  it  the  list  of 
evils  common  in  the  minds  of  conservatives  to  all 
innovations  in  social  regulation.  Every  infrac- 
tion of  ancient  economic  rule,  we  long  ago  learned 
from  the  defenders  of  a  settled  society,  is  inquisi- 
torial, costly,  impractical,  unphilosophic,  unchris- 
tian, ruinous  to  capital  and  destructive  of  labor's 
self-respect.  But  the  present  generation  has  in 
important  matters  often  seen  this  set  of  argu- 
ments undone  by  time.  Practice  has  disproved 
prophecy. 

Stability  in  the  wage-rates  of  women  and  minors 
would  eventually  be  a  gain  to  all  financially  sound 
employers.  Living  wages  would  compel  every 
industry  to  support  its  workers.  Certain  indus- 


AND  THE  MINIMUM  WAGE          103 

tries  escape  that  duty  as  their  wage  scales  now 
are. 

A  continually  fluctuating  labor  market  is  a 
heavy  burden  on  the  fair  employer  in  manufac- 
tures. He  is  menaced  by  the  under-cutting  of  his 
wage-rates,  by  his  rivals  in  business,  by  strikes  of 
his  employes,  by  the  uncertainties  of  the  future, 
by  alterations  in  costs.  His  losses  besides  are 
those  of  a  citizen  obliged  to  help  support  those  of 
his  competitors  not  paying  a  living  wage  and 
whose  employes  are  hence  from  time  to  time 
thrown  on  the  community  for  assistance. 

We  cannot  but  conclude  that  the  fair  employer 
must  in  the  end  agree  with  us  on  the  desirability 
and  feasibility  of  the  minimum  wage  as  here  advo- 
cated. We  have  chosen  to  look  at  it  much  from  his 
angle  of  vision,  which  presents  the  subject  in  a 
light  not  so  readily  caught  from  the  purely  labor 
side.  In  so  doing,  we  have  sought  to  collaborate 
with  him  to  put  bread  in  the  mouths  of  underfed 
children  and  to  remove  sorrow  and  anxiety  from 
the  home  of  many  a  poor  mother. 

A  word  to  the  good,  but  principle-bound,  men 
who  catch,  as  if  seizing  social  safety  devices,  at 
such  phrases  as  "contract,"  "liberty,"  "a  free 
market,"  "mutual  agreement,"  when  speaking  of 
the  arrangement  of  terms  for  labor.  There  are 
few  among  them,  we  verily  believe,  who  would  not 
take  to  task,  in  some  way,  any  neighbor  known  to 
them  as  an  oppressor  of  the  weak,  an  unmerciful 


104  THE  WAGE  EABNERS 

taskmaster  to  children,  a  cheat  in  the  payment  of 
his  domestic  servants.  Such  a  man  they  would 
talk  about,  avoid,  boycott,  punish  with  zeal.  They 
would  unite  in  making  an  example  of  him.  Why, 
then,  cannot  the  community  rightfully  unite  in 
simply  exacting  scant  justice  from  an  employer 
who  is  habitually  guilty  of  all  the  acts  mentioned  ? 
Not  only  of  those  acts,  but  of  robbing  the  com- 
munity of  a  part  of  the  means  to  maintain  his 
business. 

An  industry  employing  women  and  children 
which  cannot  afford,  or  which  fails,  to  pay  wages 
sufficiently  high  to  enable  them  to  live  healthy  and 
normal  lives  is  a  detriment,  not  a  benefit,  to  society 
and  should  not  be  permitted  to  exist. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE  WAGE  EARNERS  AND  THE  TRUSTS. 

The  trade  unionist  has  his  own  special  problems 
with  regard  to  the  trusts.  To  a  degree  he  is  nat- 
urally interested  with  all  other  citizens  in  watch- 
ing the  steps  being  taken  by  the  government  with 
the  avowed  aim  of  dissolving  them.  As  a  con- 
sumer he  has  reason  to  study  their  effects  on 
prices.  As  an  investor,  though  not  deeply  con- 
cerned in  them  personally,  he  is  aware  of  the  bad 
effects  on  business  caused  by  uncertainty  as  to 
their  legality,  their  future,  and  the  financial  fate 
of  their  shareholders.  As  a  fairly  intelligent  man 
of  the  twentieth  century,  he  can  have  no  deep-set 
aversion  to  that  phase  of  the  trust  which  relates 
to  increased  efficiency  through  improved  forms  of 
organization,  or  of  management  in  buying  and 
selling,  or  through  adopting  the  latest  machinery 
and  the  cheapest  methods  of  transportation,  for 
these  features  of  production,  as  developed  to  their 
highest  plane,  are  without  doubt  destined  to  be 
characteristic  of  the  final  order  of  society.  But 
whatever  his  other  relation  to  it  may  be,  it  is  as  a 
trade  unionist  that  certain  particular  results  of 
the  trust  problem  affect  him  directly.  One  of  these 
results  has  been  that  the  trade  union,  of  all  the 
"combinations"  of  the  day,  was  the  first  to  be 


106  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

brought  to  account  under  the  Sherman  act,  once 
popular  with  reformers  and  intended  by  the  gov- 
ernment to  be  the  instrument  for  curbing  the  real 
trusts.  Another  has  been  the  temporary  weaken- 
ing of  several  national  trade  unions  through  sys- 
tematic machinations  of  the  trusts  on  a  scale  not 
possible  to  any  but  multi-millionaire  organiza- 
tions. 

The  course  of  the  series  of  events  relating  to  the 
Sherman  anti-trust  act  which  ended  in  the  convic- 
tion of  trade  unionists  as  the  only  malefactors 
under  its  operations  up  to  nearly  two  decades 
after  its  passage,  would  serve  to  confirm  the  cyni- 
cal observation  that  under  the  law  might  makes 
right  and  that  no  matter  whom  a  statute  is  aimed 
at,  the  laboring  man  is  sure  to  be  the  one  it 
strikes. 

It  is  the  testimony  of  the  officials  of  the  Ameri- 
can Federation  of  Labor  at  headquarters,  and  of 
the  labor  legislative  committeemen  of  that  day, 
that  in  1890,  at  the  time  of  the  passage  of  the 
Sherman  act,  it  was  understood  that  the  proposed 
statute  should  not  apply  to  the  trade  union.  "The 
bill  in  its  first  stages,"  states  President  Gompers, 
"contained  a  section  affirmatively  declaring  that 
the  organizations  of  working  people  instituted  for 
the  purpose  of  regulating  wages,  hours  of  labor, 
and  conditions  of  employment,  should  not  come 
under  the  operations  of  the  proposed  law."  And 
when  that  section  was  under  consideration  in  Con- 


AND  THE  TRUSTS  107 

gress  Senator  George  of  Mississippi  and  Senator 
Hoar  of  Massachusetts,  in  reply  to  inquiries,  said 
that  they  were  then  satisfied  that  labor  organiza- 
tions would  not  fall  under  the  law,  if  enacted  in 
that  form.  The  bill,  after  being  referred  to  a  com- 
mittee, was  reported  back  with  the  section 
dropped,  but  assurances  were  given  by  Senators 
Hoar,  George,  Blair,  Sherman  and  others  that  or- 
ganized labor  was  not  to  come  under  the  provis- 
ions of  the  statute. 

In  the  twenty-odd  years  since  the  law  was 
passed,  the  trusts  of  manufacturers  and  business 
men  have  developed  in  this  country  as  never  be- 
fore. Not  until  within  the  last  few  years  has  the 
Sherman  act  seriously  inconvenienced  any  of 
them.  Even  now,  as  matters  stand,  none  of  the 
trust-makers,  as  such,  have  gone  to  jail.  Their 
punishment  through  the  law  has  not  destroyed 
their  real  powers  of  centralization,  the  source  of 
their  strength.  The  worst  that  is  happening  to 
any  of  the  big  combinations  is  "a  readjustment 
of  organization  to  conform  to  recent  interpreta- 
tions of  the  Sherman  law,"  or  "a  separation, 
through  legal  forms,  of  the  offending  corporation 
into  its  constituent  parts."  This,  while  public  as- 
surance is  given  by  an  attorney  of  national  repu- 
tation, who  is  a  trust  expert,  that  "the  most  ef- 
fective of  all  temporary  price  arrangements"  are 
reached  "by  barely  more  than  a  word  or  a  sign" 
and  are  known  as  "gentlemen's  agreements." 


108  THE  WAGE  EAENEBS 

Those  newspapers  which  are  commonly  regarded 
as  representative  of  big  business  refer  with  mock 
respect  to  the  Sherman  statute  when  speaking  of 
the  dissolution  of  several  of  the  trusts  now  taking 
place  under  its  menace.  The  form  of  enforcing 
a  law  is  there ;  substance  in  the  economic  changes 
effected  is  lacking.  *  *  The  laws  of  trade  cannot  be 
over-ruled  by  Congress;"  combination  in  form 
may  be  forbidden;  ownership  in  fact  cannot  be 
prevented."  It  would  be  curious  indeed  if  one 
man  with  a  hundred  millions  might  legally  own  an 
industry,  and  control  its  methods  of  production 
and  distribution,  while  two  men,  as  a  trust,  might 
not.  So,  all  told,  who  expects  real  competition  to 
be  restored  in  the  industries  which  in  their  opera- 
tions have  approached  monopolization? 

But  toward  labor  organizations  precedents  have 
been  established  under  the  Sherman  law  which 
threaten  to  render  it  a  weapon  for  their  serious 
injury,  unless  new  legislation  comes  to  their  aid. 
They  are  not  in  the  business  of  production — buy- 
ing and  selling  materials,  managing  corporations, 
issuing  stock,  and  getting  charters  from  the  gov- 
ernment. In  no  respect  can  they  promote  trade  or 
restrain  trade  in  the  sense  commonly  applicable 
to  trusts.  An  accurate  discrimination  in  the  em- 
ployment of  the  term  "combination,"  with  its 
many-phased  meanings,  has  prompted  the  British 
government  to  exempt  explicitly  the  labor  unions 


AND  THE  TRUSTS  109 

of  the  United  Kingdom  from  the  provisions  of  its 
law  against  combinations,  an  example  followed  by 
Canada  in  its  act  to  control  and  regulate  those  of 
that  country.  But  a  bill  before  our  Congress  to 
the  same  effect  halts.  Meantime,  the  power  of  our 
courts  is  invoked  to  hamper  the  trade  unions.  The 
United  States  Supreme  Court  has  decided  that  a 
refusal  by  organized  workmen  to  buy  a  particular 
firm's  goods  is  a  restraint  of  trade,  as  contem- 
plated by  the  Sherman  law — a  crime  for  which  in- 
dividual workmen  or  associations  of  workmen 
may  be  fined  and  imprisoned — and  the  union  hat- 
makers  are  wrestling  in  the  mazes  of  the  law,  try- 
ing to  avoid  a  fine  imposed  on  them  of  $240,000, 
with  fees  and  costs.  A  step  further  was  taken  by 
the  courts  in  New  Orleans  when  seventy-five  work- 
men were  indicted  for  withholding  their  labor  in 
support  of  men  on  strike  against  a  reduction  of 
wages.  A  step  still  further  has  been  attempted  in 
New  York  through  a  suit  brought  by  an  employer 
against  women  of  wealth  for  their  humanitarian 
assistance  to  girls  of  the  sweatshops  while  on 
strike.  Will  the  next  step  be  to  order  the  dissolu- 
tion of  offending  unions? 

Really,  the  punishment  the  Sherman  law  is 
bringing  upon  the  trusts  can  be  quite  fully  de- 
scribed by  telling  what  it  is  doing  to  the  trade 
union,  as  the  only  "trust"  which  cannot  wriggle 
away  from  the  act  by  hiring  lawyers  to  rewrite  its 
articles  of  incorporation.  Only  trade  unionists 


110  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

have  been  hurtfully  penalized  under  the  act,  not- 
withstanding the  obvious  fact  that  the  trade  union 
has  none  of  the  characteristics  essential  to  a  trust 
— if  the  word  is  to  bear  a  specific  meaning.  The 
trade  union  has  not  even  papers  of  incorporation. 
It  holds  no  franchise  or  charter,  issued  by  a  legis- 
lature. It  possesses  no  legal  privilege.  It  is  pro- 
tected by  no  tariff.  It  cannot  raise  or  lower  prices 
of  commodities,  sell  stocks  in  Wall  street,  adver- 
tise goods  or  bleed  consumers.  Its  "monopoly  of 
labor"  is  true  only  as  it  is  true  that  an  individual 
has  a  monopoly  of  his  own  body,  and  of  his  own 
labor,  when  he  is  free.  The  trade  union's  mission 
is  protective — of  the  poor,  of  the  weaker  ones  in 
the  economic  struggle,  of  the  men  who  have  little 
more  than  their  own  labor  and  find  the  possessors 
of  the  wealth  of  the  world  in  so  many  respects 
their  masters,  of  the  women  tortured  and  often 
stricken  through  long  hours  and  heavy  burdens  in 
the  factory  or  business  mart  while  their  first  place 
is  in  the  home,  of  the  children  stunted  in  physical, 
moral,  and  mental  growth  through  racking  labor 
in  their  tender  years.  The  trade  union!  Center 
of  hope  for  millions,  theater  of  countless  and  end- 
less acts  of  generosity;  inculcator  of  the  basic 
social  virtues  of  courage,  brotherhood,  and  self- 
sacrifice  ;  school,  assimilator,  inspirer  of  the  penni- 
less immigrant,  that  common  object  of  plunder; 
medium  for  genuine  charity,  uplifter  to  poverty,  a 
positive  help  to  humanity !  The  labor  union — the 


AND  THE  TRUSTS  111 

one  black,  foul,  criminal  trust  whose  members  de- 
serve the  stigma  of  a  public  disgrace,  a  sentence 
to  imprisonment  in  jail! 

There  is  not  another  country  on  the  face  of  the 
earth  that  has  adopted  the  principle  of  the  Sher- 
man law.  There  is  not  another  country  that  has 
in  all  its  code  such  a  law  to  be  used  against  the 
trade  unions.  There  is  not  another  country  in 
which  the  real  trusts  have  been  able  to  carry  on  a 
campaign  of  displacement  of  union  men  with  the 
assistance  of  laws  professedly  designed  for  the 
protection  of  labor.  There  is  not  another  country 
whose  captains  of  industry  have  employed  foreign 
laborers  by  the  million  to  break  down  the  stand- 
ards of  living  among  its  own  people. 

The  steel  trust,  the  tobacco  trust,  the  flour  trust, 
the  beef  trust,  the  leather  trust,  the  anthra- 
cite coal  trust  —  do  they  today  pay  the  Amer- 
ican standard  of  wages  to  more  than  twenty 
per  cent,  of  their  laborers!  The  farce  of 
the  contract-labor  law  is  seen  in  their  hosts  of 
immigrant  employes.  For  many  years  it  has 
not  been  worth  while  for  the  managers  of  any 
large  industry  to  send  abroad  openly  to  make 
contracts  with  intending  immigrants.  The  nec- 
essary trick  is  simple.  A  few  laborers  in  their 
employ  can  on  instigation  summon  by  letter  to 
this  country  all  the  laborers  of  their  home  vil- 
lages or  communes  who  are  disposed  to  emigrate, 
an  intimation  as  to  where  work  may  be  found 


112  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

being  sufficient.  Or,  the  padrones  and  so-called 
intelligence  bureaus  of  the  larger  cities,  New 
York  principally,  are  in  position  to  import  and 
distribute  gangs  of  almost  any  number  of  men 
to  any  part  of  America.  On  these  sources  of 
common  labor  the  trusts  have  drawn  while  pur- 
suing a  plan  on  a  comprehensive  scope  for  cut- 
ting wages,  for  maintaining  the  twelve-hour 
shift,  for  depriving  their  workmen  of  the  rights 
and  powers  exercised  through  the  trade  union. 
Toward  the  union,  and  consequently  toward 
American  labor  and  the  European  labor  most 
nearly  its  equal  in  education  and  independent 
character,  the  trusts  have  applied  the  principle, 
carried  out  in  their  transactions  in  other 
respects,  of  buying  in  the  cheapest  markets  and 
eliminating  opposition. 

Temporarily,  in  some  notable  instances,  this 
policy  of  the  trusts  toward  labor  has  been  par- 
tially successful.  But  it  may  now  be  confidently 
asserted  that  in  adopting  it  they  made  a  fatal 
mistake.  Not  only  have  they  added  force  to  the 
ugly  antagonism  which  they  are  encountering  on 
the  part  of  the  American  common  people,  and 
made  it  more  of  a  certainty  that  their  contest  for 
permanency  will  be  the  more  costly  to  them  and 
the  more  doubtful  in  its  issue,  but  it  may  be 
prophesied  that  all  their  deliberate  efforts  to 
crush  out  trade  unionism  among  their  employes 
will  come  to  naught. 


AND  THE  TRUSTS  113 

Each  stage  in  the  progress  of  the  trade  union 
in  this  country  has  seen  its  appropriate  methods 
for  promoting  organization.  At  first,  to  form 
local  unions  and  then  combine  them  in  em- 
bryonic district  or  national  unions,  volunteer 
missionaries  as  organizers  and  other  officials, 
chiefly  advanced  the  cause.  Next,  while  allotting 
to  volunteer  effort  its  fitting  sphere  of  duty,  paid 
officials  were  employed,  especially  to  conduct  the 
organization  of  the  growing  national  and  inter- 
national unions.  A  step  further  was  taken  when 
commissioned  organizers  became  a  regular  fac- 
tor of  the  unions,  and  assisted  the  international 
officers,  together  forming  a  corps  equipped  for 
their  duties  as  men  for  a  profession,  familiar 
with  the  labor  laws,  experienced  as  negotiators 
with  employers,  acquainted  with  the  markets  for 
the  output  of  industries,  and  accustomed  to  watch 
legislators.  Another  profitable  step  was  estab- 
lishing a  labor  press,  every  industrial  centre 
today  having  at  least  one  union  newspaper.  In 
all,  propaganda  proceeding  from  these  various 
sources  brought  the  spirit  of  union  labor  into 
every  community  in  the  country. 

As  a  result,  recruits  no  longer  come  to  the 
unions  only  as  individuals,  each  entering  as  a 
single  convert  and  casting  his  lot  with  men  per- 
haps unknown  to  him.  The  present  process  takes 
in  men  and  women  by  the  thousands.  First 
spreads  the  general  sentiment  among  the  people 


114  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

of  an  unorganized  occupation  that  the  union  has 
a  positive,  necessary,  and  inevitable  mission  with 
the  working-classes — and  not  in  a  far-off  future. 
In  looking  to  it  for  help,  the  workers  see  that 
they  are  depending  upon  themselves  and  their 
fellow-workers,  and  not  upon  Ladies  Bountiful 
and  Lords  Charitable.  Millions  of  other  workers 
have  obtained  a  foothold  in  freedom  by  asserting 
themselves  in  a  body — why  not  they?  "Tis  the 
truth,  the  living  truth — act  on  it !  And  moved  by 
a  common  impulse,  the  incoherent  multitude 
becomes  an  organic  entity;  in  it  isolation  has 
given  way  to  solidarity;  brotherhood  has  re- 
placed egoism;  it  feels,  thinks,  and  acts  as  one 
effective  being,  a  division  of  society.  So  it  was 
when  the  ten  thousand  Fifth  avenue  dressmakers 
walked  out  in  September,  1911,  when  the  forty, 
seventy,  one  hundred  thousand  shirtwaist  mak- 
ers, garment  workers,  laborers  in  general  of  one 
city  or  another  in  the  past  two  or  three  years 
took  their  first  common  step  together,  learning 
by  it  sufficient  of  the  virtues  of  unionism  to  form 
an  experience  never  to  be  forgotten. 

This  remarkable  and  predictive  social  phenom- 
enon, a  strike  as  nearly  general  to  an  industry 
as  circumstances  require,  has  of  recent  years 
repeatedly  taken  place  in  all  the  great  industrial 
countries.  Just  as  Sedan  taught  in  war  a  lesson 
which  military  men  say  ought  to  have  been  ex- 
pounded in  fact  at  Gettysburg — that  a  whole 


AND  THE  TRUSTS  115 

army  may  be  captured — so  one  great  strike  after 
another  is  teaching  the  laboring  masses  in  all 
countries  the  potentialities  in  the  suspension  of 
work  covering  an  entire  occupation,  or,  if  occa- 
sion demands,  even  a  larger  social  area.  In  this 
country,  in  1902,  the  anthracite  miners  found  the 
way,  with  150,000  men ;  in  1905-6,  the  typograph- 
ical union  held  its  entire  trade  magnificently, 
with  50,000  highly  skilled  artisans ;  in  1907-8,  the 
railroad  men,  without  a  walk-out,  showed  the 
workableness  of  a  nation-wide  common  stand, 
communicating,  as  they  did,  the  fact  to  the  rail- 
road managers  that  labor  was  not  to  bear  the 
brunt  of  the  burdens  of  the  panic  of  1907  and 
would  accept  no  reduction  in  wages.  In  France, 
in  the  great  strike  two  years  ago  of  the  railway, 
telegraph,  and  postoffice  employes,  the  idea  of  in- 
dustrial solidarity  was  illustrated,  recklessly.  In 
Great  Britain,  in  the  summer  of  1911,  the  absten- 
tion from  work  was  just  as  large  as  had  been 
predetermined  by  necessity. 

Colonies  transplanted  to  America  from  darkest 
Europe  do  not  remain  benighted.  Men  who  read 
the  working-class  periodicals  printed  in  foreign 
languages  say  that  of  all  the  radical  press  in 
America,  they  are  the  most  bitter.  Their  editors 
and  the  foreign  labor  leaders  commonly  preach 
the  general  strike.  The  most  ungovernable  and 
otherwise  desperate  strikers  in  America  in  recent 
years  have  been  great  bodies  of  non-unionists, 


116  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

the  larger  proportion  not  speaking  the  English 
language. 

The  game  played  by  those  manipulators  of 
wealth  by  the  hundreds  of  millions,  those  man- 
agers of  scores  of  consolidated  corporations, 
bent  on  setting  laboring  men  by  the  tens  of  thou- 
sands in  competition  with  one  another,  is  fore- 
doomed to  failure.  The  leaven  of  American  inde- 
pendence and  trade  union  sentiment  is  at  work 
among  their  deceived  and  oppressed  employes 
everywhere.  The  last  illiterate  bunch  of  muscles 
among  them  has  been  electrified  by  the  repeated 
spectacle,  here  and  abroad,  of  the  mass  facing 
fearlessly,  and  with  overwhelming  power,  both 
master  and  class.  Out  of  the  confusion,  the  dis- 
sension, the  competition  of  the  great  trusts' 
laborers  may  come,  at  any  opportune  moment,  a 
movement  manifestive  of  a  desire  to  profit  by 
the  example  thus  so  often  set  them  by  others  of 
their  condition.  Events  have  their  direct,  un- 
deviating  logic.  In  every  calling  among  the 
trust  wage  workers  there  is  an  imperative  ne- 
cessity— both  for  themselves  and  for  the  common 
weal — of  complete  organization  on  a  national 
scale. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE  WAGE  EARNERS  AND  UNEMPLOYMENT. 

When  we  consider  that  in  an  equitable  and  effi- 
cient organization  of  society  there  could  be  no 
unemployment,  in  the  sense  of  capable  wage- 
workers  wanting  work  and  being  unable  to  find 
it,  and  then  look  at  the  amount  of  unemployment 
today  in  this  country,  we  see  injustice,  ineffi- 
ciency, and  neglect  of  our  working  people  in  the 
economic  plan  and  make-up  of  our  present 
society. 

The  United  States  is  the  only  great  industrial 
country  that  has  not  taken  up  the  problem  of 
unemployment  and  endeavored  to  mitigate  its 
deplorable  effects.  Neither  the  national  govern- 
ment nor  that  of  any  State  has  any  adequate  or 
systematic  means  of  ascertaining  the  number  of 
unemployed  at  any  given  time  in  any  community. 
With  us  in  America  the  problem  is  exceptionally 
complicated,  through  the  factor  of  an  immigra- 
tion unknown  to  all  other  countries.  Were  we  to 
adopt  measures  for  the  relief  of  the  unemployed 
similar  to  those  in  practice  either  in  Germany  or 
Great  Britain,  and  make  no  provision  for  ex- 
cluding immigrants  from  their  operation,  the 
risk  would  be  encountered  of  simply  providing 
better  means  than  at  present  exist  for  distrib- 


118  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

uting  newly  landed  immigrants  throughout  our 
country,  to  get  work  which  might  be  done  by 
labor  already  here. 

For  a  century  this  government  possessed,  in 
its  unappropriated  natural  resources,  an  ever- 
reliable  absorber  of  labor  seeking  employment. 
Those  resources  no  longer  perform  that  function 
directly,  except  in  a  limited  degree.  We  have 
arrived  at  the  state  at  which  social  action,  in 
some  form,  must  to  an  extent  take  the  place  of 
the  individual  effort  which  in  the  past  could  be 
depended  upon  in  a  land  of  opportunities,  the 
principal  of  which,  the  free  West,  was  contin- 
uously open. 

A  Federal  commission  has  reported  that  our 
labor  market  is  overstocked,  especially  in  the 
unskilled  occupations. 

Such  is  our  national  situation  with  respect  to 
employment,  and  its  reverse,  unemployment, 
viewed  in  its  broadest  scope  and  features.  It  is 
by  this  view  that  judgment  on  the  question  must 
be  reached.  If  we  permit  ourselves  to  approach 
the  subject  merely  as  guided  by  personal  expe- 
rience, or  the  interests  of  one  element,  or  another 
in  the  community,  or  the  observations  of  inves- 
tigators who  for  any  reason  do  not  go  on  to  the 
end  of  their  work,  we  may  arrive  at  imperfect 
conclusions.  Some  workingmen  are  rarely  out 
of  employment ;  they  are  the  strong,  the  capable, 
the  energetic.  If  they  look  no  further  than  their 


AND  UNEMPLOYMENT  119 

own  experience,  there  is  no  such  thing  as  unem- 
ployment. Unfortunately  for  the  cause  of  truth, 
the  fact  is  that  many  men,  in  and  out  of  the  wage- 
earning  class,  solve  every  social  problem — to 
their  own  satisfaction — merely  in  the  light  of 
what  they  themselves  have  seen  or  gone  through. 
Many  employers  cannot  find  workers  when  they 
want  them;  they  consequently  become  irritated 
when  told  that  much  labor  is  idle  and  say  that 
the  reason  for  it  is  to  be  found  in  sloth.  Employ- 
ers whose  work  fluctuates  by  seasons  make  widely 
known  at  the  beginning  of  their  live  season  their 
plaint  of  inability  to  find  their  complement  of 
workers  at  short  notice;  they  send  out  no  signals 
of  distress,  however,  at  the  beginning  of  their 
dead  season,  when  they  dismiss  all  but  a  skeleton 
of  their  force.  Social  investigators  may  record 
such  facts  as  that  snow-shovelers  in  mid-winter 
are  scarce,  despite  the  cry  of  unemployment; 
they  perhaps  may  not  give  due  weight  to  the 
explanation  that  city  out-of-works  are  indoor 
workers,  unaccustomed  to  heavy  muscular  effort 
and  unprovided  with  the  personal  outfit  neces- 
sary for  out-door  labor  in  severe  weather. 

No ;  such  narrow  views  are  not  sufficient.  The 
subject  can  only  be  grasped  nationally,  or  by 
large  areas  of  the  country  and  by  taking  into 
consideration  besides  the  category  of  wage 
laborers,  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men  and 
women  who  offer  their  labor,  manual  or  mental, 


120  THE  WAGE  EAENEBS 

for  compensation.  If  we  so  proceed  we  shall  find 
in  America  a  state  of  economic  affairs  relative 
to  employment  unlike  that  existing  in  any  other 
country.  It  may  be  taken  for  granted  that  in  no 
European  country  is  there  such  a  proportion  as 
in  the  United  States  of  fairly  successful  grand- 
fathers and  fathers  who,  to  their  disappoint- 
ment, cannot  find  situations  for  their  boys  of  the 
present  generation,  with  prospects  such  as  the 
elders  enjoyed.  The  reorganization  of  industry 
and  commerce  of  the  last  few  decades  has  not 
left  it  so  easy  to  mount  the  ladder  of  success 
from  the  lowest  rung.  Generally,  the  ladder  for 
small  enterprises  is  no  longer  there.  What  to 
do  with  their  sons  waiting  for  an  opportunity  is 
frequently  a  more  anxious  question  with  fairly 
well-to-do  families  than  with  people  in  compara- 
tively straitened  circumstances.  Proportion- 
ately, too,  we  have  the  largest  number  of  pro- 
fessional men  in  the  world — commonly  in  agree- 
ment on  one  point,  that  the  country  could  well 
get  along  with  fewer.  On  the  other  hand, 
elasticity  in  diminishing  the  effects  of  unemploy- 
ment among  these  classes  exists  in  the  possibili- 
ties of  doubling  up  at  home  with  the  old  folks  or 
depending  on  the  wife's  income  or  labor.  Hard 
times  in  business  cuts  down  the  migration  from 
farm  to  town,  postpones  marriages,  lessens  the 
demand  for  large  and  expensive  flats  or  houses, 
curtails  personal  outlay  in  many  directions.  It 


AND  UNEMPLOYMENT  121 

is  a  heart-breaking  social  process.  The  mortifica- 
tions, anxieties,  even  agonies,  experienced  by  the 
people  above  public  aid,  as  they  resort  to  the 
shifts  best  known  to  their  class  in  staving  off 
stark  poverty  when  their  bread-winners  are  idle, 
in  many  cases  quite  equal  the  acute  sufferings  of 
the  unemployed  poor.  Indeed,  many  of  them  who 
meet  with  reverses  become  acquainted  with  hun- 
ger itself.  This  phase  of  unemployment  deserves 
recognition  here  inasmuch  as  it  is  to  be  doubted 
that  the  same  class  in  foreign  countries  is  so 
much  in  jeopardy  from  lack  of  occupation  as  in 
this  country,  changes  in  industry  not  being  so 
great  or  so  sudden  and  widespread  as  here. 
Moreover,  the  number  of  our  men  and  women 
who  during  unemployment  drop  off  from  the 
ranks  of  the  apparently  prosperous,  and  are 
obliged  to  take  their  chances  with  the  hard  work- 
ing, is  by  no  means  inconsiderable.  The  bread 
lines  and  the  lodging  houses  of  the  Bowery  type 
have  usually,  by  report,  a  large  proportion  of 
educated  Americans,  indicative  of  the  number 
barely  holding  on  at  a  grade  a  little  higher  up, 
living  in  deprivation.  This  class  of  sufferers 
from  unemployment,  while  it  strongly  appeals  to 
the  observer  sentimentally,  is  beyond  the  reach 
of  direct  state  interference  practically.  The 
people  in  it  can  never  be  enumerated,  classified  as 
worthy  or  unworthy,  placed  under  inspector- 
ship, or  given  places  through  labor  bureaus.  But 


122  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

for  all  that,  they  form  a  noteworthy  factor  in  the 
problem  of  unemployment,  its  causes,  its  loss  to 
production,  and  its  detriment  to  society. 

When  we  turn  our  attention  to  our  artisans 
and  laborers,  we  find  them  subject  to  certain 
causes  for  unemployment  not  usual  in  Europe. 
It  is  a  settled  policy  with  employers  in  some  of 
our  great  industries  not  to  give  a  full  year's 
work  to  their  employes,  even  where  it  might  be 
done.  The  anthracite  miners  average  less  than 
two  hundred  days'  work  annually,  whereas 
steady  employment  might  be  given  a  regular 
force  in  the  industry  for  at  least  three  hundred 
days.  Suspension  of  work  at  mills  and  factories, 
in  consequence  of  consolidation  or  with  intention 
of  union  breaking,  has  characterized  the  steel, 
the  textile  and  other  industries.  Our  building 
trades  in  the  North  lose  two  months  more  in  the 
winter  season  than  do  those  of  England.  Such 
factors  serve  to  render  the  subject  more  perplex- 
ing here  than  in  the  Old  World.  Other  points  of 
difference  exist.  We  have  no  such  loss  to  indus- 
try as  that  from  the  "class"  of  young  men  on 
the  Continent  of  Europe  going  each  year  into  the 
army,  and  no  such  dubious  gain  as  in  the  re-entry 
of  the  "class"  returned  to  civil  life,  with  the 
difficulties  of  putting  the  right  men  into  the 
vacancies ;  we  have  no  such  question  as  is  before 
England  in  connection  with  its  numerous  sea- 
faring men,  nor  several  other  countries  with 


AND  UNEMPLOYMENT  123 

their  illiterate  masses,  in  cases  reaching  nearly 
50  per  cent,  of  all  the  adult  males.  On  the  other 
hand,  European  countries  have  not  our  negro 
question,  or  an  immigrant  population,  speaking 
diverse  tongues. 

If  we  seek  light  on  a  remedy  for  our  own 
unemployment  problem  by  studying  what  has 
been  done  in  the  countries  further  advanced  in 
dealing  with  the  question  for  themselves,  we  can- 
not by  any  means  be  sure  that  their  methods  would 
meet  a  degree  of  success  here  corresponding  with 
that  attained  by  them  elsewhere. 

The  very  first  step  in  taking  cognizance  of 
unemployment  as  the  object  of  a  national  reform 
through  such  means  as  labor  exchanges,  out-of- 
work  relief,  or  similar  administrative  agencies 
necessitating  supervision  of  the  unemployed,  is 
to  ascertain  approximately  the  number  of  people 
who  might  thus  be  reached,  on  the  average, 
annually,  in  the  course  of  the  years.  In  the 
United  States  this  is  a  far  more  difficult  task 
than  in  any  country  in  Europe.  Area,  the  sparse 
settlement  of  vast  districts,  our  sudden  fluctua- 
tions in  employment,  besides  the  various  nation- 
alities of  the  immigrants  and  the  wandering 
habits  of  so  many  of  our  native  wage  earners — 
all  these  facts  indicate  so  many  obstacles  to  any- 
thing like  a  correct  census.  Any  one  may  make 
his  guess  of  the  number  out  of  work  at  a  given 
time.  The  politicians  among  the  "outs"  always 


124  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

have  more  unemployed  in  the  country  than  the 
politicians  among  the  "ins."  Social  revolu- 
tionists consistently  see  an  enormous  number  of 
the  idle  and  starving.  The  New  York  Labor 
Bureau  publishes  at  stated  periods  a  report  bear- 
ing on  the  subject  for  the  State,  based  largely  on 
trade  union  returns,  and  not  for  the  entire  pop- 
ulation. These  reports  carry  the  observer  some- 
what nearer  the  truth  than  might  his  own  other- 
wise unsubstantiated  estimate,  but  the  bureau 
officials  themselves  do  not  ask  the  public  to 
regard  their  figures  as  well  founded  statistics 
representing  fully  sifted  facts.  Their  statements 
may  run  that  5  to  10  per  cent,  of  the  membership 
of  certain  trade  unions  were  out  of  work  at  given 
dates,  which  may  indicate  the  dull  seasons  in  the 
trades  reported  rather  than  unemployment  as  a 
social  phenomenon  affecting  laborers  of  all  call- 
ings. The  truth  is  bad  enough  at  times,  even 
after  it  has  been  proved  that  commonly  accepted 
figures  are  inflated.  The  "Bulletin  of  the  Bureau 
of  Labor"  (Federal)  has  on  record  the  results 
of  an  inquiry  made  in  1878  when  the  Massachu- 
setts Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics  made  two  can- 
vasses of  the  State  to  ascertain  the  number  of 
people  out  of  employment.  It  had  been  reported 
that  40,000  were  out  in  Boston,  200,000  to  300,000 
in  Massachusetts,  and  3,000,000  in  the  United 
States.  The  Bureau  found  28,508  out  in  the  State 
in  June,  and  not  more  than  23,000  in  November — 


AND  UNEMPLOYMENT  125 

skilled  and  unskilled,  male  and  female.  On  this 
basis,  the  number  out  for  the  whole  country 
would  have  been  460,000.  Perhaps  those  who 
speak  for  the  unemployed  have  grown  cautious, 
but  very  recently  the  press  quoted  the  worthy 
gentleman  who  is  devoting  his  life  to  the  cause 
of  the  unemployed,  acting  as  president  of  an 
organization  laboring  in  their  behalf,  as  giving 
his  estimate  that  in  the  summer  of  1911  the  num- 
ber was  over  4,500,000.  If,  indeed,  it  was  1,000,- 
000  it  signified  a  serious  loss  to  the  nation  every 
day.  If  the  number  were  but  half  a  million  in 
the  class  of  laborers,  there  is  still  to  be  added  the 
number  in  the  classes  not  so  denominated.  Even 
when  modified  by  persistent  doubters  and  careful 
bureau  statisticians,  the  number  of  the  unem- 
ployed is  sufficient  to  constitute  a  source  of 
national  anxiety.  When  we  think  of  the  misery 
of  the  man  or  woman  dependent  on  wages  being 
out  of  work,  but  willing  and  anxious  to  work,  and 
reflect  that  perhaps  today  a  million  of  persons 
are  thus  suffering,  we  must  decide  that  of  all  the 
economic  questions  brought  before  society  none 
is  more  serious  than  this. 

With  the  wage  earners  given  steady  employ- 
ment, at  living  wages,  society  might  proceed  to 
answer  all  the  other  problems  of  the  human  race 
in  comparative  peace  and  happiness.  But  this 
is  a  long  stage  beyond  any  yet  sought  by  the 
nations  that  have  given  the  problem  of  unemploy- 


126  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

ment  the  most  attention.  They  have  gone  no 
further  than  to  try  to  keep  the  unemployed  wage 
earners  just  about  alive  and  to  put  them  in  con- 
nection with  employers.  In  this  work  Germany 
has  taken  the  lead,  enabled  to  do  so  through  her 
state  systems  of  insuring  and  pensioning  the 
laborers,  of  rendering  aid  through  trade  union 
and  other  voluntary  administrations,  and  of 
maintaining  labor  bureaus  and  temporary  lodg- 
ings for  the  unemployed.  Great  Britain  is  now 
in  the  fourth  year  of  experimenting  with  a  na- 
tional system  of  government  labor  bureaus,  from 
which  much  was  expected,  as  a  step  supple- 
mentary to  old-age  pensions,  but  which  has  been 
the  subject  of  criticism  by  some  of  the  trade 
unions. 

There  is  not  space  here  to  enter  into  a  descrip- 
tion of  Germany's  interwoven  methods  of  pro- 
tecting its  laborers  in  the  less  gainful  callings 
from  extreme  distress,  but  mention  of  its  prin- 
cipal agencies  will  show  their  inapplicability  as 
a  whole  in  this  country,  at  least  for  a  long  time, 
and  the  inadequacy  of  any  of  them  separately 
from  the  rest. 

In  Germany,  every  person  under  twenty-one 
years  of  age  must  have  a  " labor  book,*'  which  is 
held  by  the  employer  during  employment  and 
must  be  shown  by  an  applicant  when  seeking 
Work.  When  over  twenty-one,  all  wage  workers, 
except  a.  comparatively  small  number  of  the 


AND  UNEMPLOYMENT  127 

higher  paid,  carry  insurance  cards,  there  being 
at  present  about  18,000,000  persons  insured. 
The  card  of  each  individual  shows  a  record  of 
his  occupation,  wages,  health,  insurance  pay- 
ments, and  other  economic  circumstances.  This 
card  he  must  produce  when  he  takes  a  new  job, 
applies  at  a  labor  exchange  for  work,  asks  his 
union  for  out-of-work  payment,  or  seeks  a  lodg- 
ing in  one  of  the  municipal  or  union  shelters. 
There  are  other  cards,  also,  for  the  class  of 
migratory  laborers  liable  to  become  homeless 
tramps,  who  are  subject  to  a  system  of  police 
and  organized  philanthropic  supervision  which 
brings  as  nearly  as  possible  all  of  them  under  a 
discipline  from  which  it  is  difficult  to  escape  a 
single  day.  Mendicancy  renders  one  liable  to 
arrest.  In  the  light  of  these  systems,  one  work- 
ing in  with  another,  it  may  be  seen  why  there  is 
little  begging  in  public  and  no  nuisance  of  law- 
less vagrancy  in  Germany.  But  it  would  be  a 
woful  error,  it  must  be  said,  to  suppose  there- 
fore that  there  is  little  poverty  in  the  great  Ger- 
man Empire.  Much  acute  suffering  from  dire 
and  hopeless  poverty  is  prevented  through  the 
government's  elaborate  methods  and  a  vigilance 
that  never  relaxes.  Absolute  starvation  is  rare, 
scientific  prevention  of  disease  is  advancing, 
assistance  reaches  the  poor  from  sources,  public' 
and  private,  not  existing  in  America.  But  the 
statistics  relating  to  relief  reveal  the  degree  to 


128  THE  WAGE  EABNERS 

which  the  masses  still  bear  the  burdens  of 
deprivation.  For  instance,  the  number  of  persons 
obtaining  temporary  lodgings  in  a  year  in  the 
''shelters"  reaches  two  millions.  Municipal  out- 
of-work  insurance,  of  which  much  praise  has  been 
written  in  this  country,  seems  a  small  matter  to 
an  American.  The  amount  to  be  drawn  may  run 
about  thirty  cents  a  day  for  six  weeks.  But  then, 
as  to  the  whole  system  of  pensions  and  sick  in- 
surance, much  the  same  comment  is  to  be  made. 
The  amounts  drawn,  while  on  the  whole  an  un- 
doubtedly important  aid  to  the  workers,  signify 
only  provision  for  the  barest  necessaries  for 
existence. 

Enough  is  suggested  in  the  foregoing  facts  to 
lead  to  the  conclusion  that  just  what  German 
experience  might  teach  us  would  be  a  matter  for 
careful  study.  No  example  for  our  imitation  lies 
on  the  surface  of  the  German  situation.  No 
more  is  there  any  lesson  for  us  in  the  outcome  of 
either  the  British  or  French  labor  exchanges, 
with  their  utterly  unlike  methods,  except  a 
warning. 

It  is  to  be  seriously  doubted  whether  our  work- 
ing-class population  in  America  can  be  helped 
much  through  the  European  point  of  view  with 
regard  to  the  wage  workers.  Of  the  three  most 
obvious  classifications  of  our  laborers — the  white 
American,  the  negro,  and  the  foreign — the  first 
class  stands  so  far  apart  not  only  from  the 


AND  UNEMPLOYMENT  129 

others,  in  economic  condition  and  mental  devel- 
opment, but  from  the  European  working-classes, 
that  public  measures  of  help  adapted  to  the  latter 
might  not  in  the  least  degree  be  suitable  to  it. 
The  American-bred  wage  worker  does  not  wish  to 
be  the  ward  of  any  man  or  system — classified, 
numbered,  tagged,  and  obliged  to  carry  a  card  of 
identification,  or  be  subject  to  police  control  and 
employing-class  supervision.  In  fact,  the  Ameri- 
can wage  worker  who  is  the  product  of  our  gen- 
eral system  of  education  is  about  the  equal  of  his 
fellow-citizens  and  needs  only  the  fair  opportuni- 
ties promised  in  the  principles  of  our  republic  to 
work  out  his  own  economic  salvation. 

Safe  conclusions  to  be  derived  from  the  reports 
of  those  public  employment  offices  thus  far  estab- 
lished in  the  United  States  are  that  they  are 
adapted  principally  to  the  needs  of  unskilled 
laborers  and  persons  in  domestic  service  and  that 
their  beneficial  development  might  lie  in  facili- 
ties for  making  public  the  points  where  labor  is 
in  demand  and  for  the  movement  of  laborers  on 
the  land,  especially  in  harvest  seasons.  In  the 
industries  and  mining,  the  most  pressing  need 
exists  for  not  only  compensation  for  accidents 
but  for  inspection.  How  little  the  public  here  is 
prepared  for  such  a  network  of  labor  exchanges 
and  its  accompanying  institutions  as  cares  for 
the  unemployed  in  Germany,  was  illustrated  by 
the  history  of  New  York's  State  labor  bureau. 


130  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

Established  in  1896  as  the  beginning  of  a  pro- 
posed system  on  the  Continental  plan,  its  work 
always  of  a  feeble  character,  it  was  abolished  in 
1906,  a  failure,  the  appropriation  for  it  being 
turned  over  to  additional  factory  inspection. 

Well,  what  can  be  done  for  our  unemployed1? 
Alas!  it  is,  in  the  end,  one  of  the  deepest  ques- 
tions confronting  our  government,  our  civiliza- 
tion, our  social  system.  Immediately,  in  the 
United  States,  effective  and  to  a  point  continuous 
relief  to  our  overstocked  labor  market  is  to  be 
found  in  persisting  in  American  principles,  under 
which  the  wage  earner  is  an  independent  citizen, 
rather  than  in  trying  to  follow  European  exam- 
ples, by  which  the  wage  earners  are  regarded  as 
wards  of  society.  The  American  system  of  giv- 
ing a  citizen  his  rights  and  then  letting  him  do 
for  himself  has  not  yet  entirely  broken  down. 
What  has  broken  down  is  the  notion  that  America 
could  be  permanently  a  refuge  for  the  oppressed 
and  downtrodden  of  the  whole  world.  An  enor- 
mous practical  relief  to  our  wage  workers  would 
be  given  through  governmental  measures  such  as 
these:  Eestriction  of  immigration,  a  steady  de- 
velopment of  the  policy  of  reclamation,  with 
new  adaptations  of  our  homestead  law  to  the 
reclaimed  lands,  and  persistency  in  the  suppres- 
sion of  legalized  privileges.  In  such  methods  lie 
increased  opportunity  and  decreased  exploitation 
for  the  masses.  Existing  voluntary  systems  in 


AND  UNEMPLOYMENT  131 

this  country,  such  as  trade  union  labor  bureaus, 
advertisements  of  labor  supply  and  demand 
through  the  press,  and  industrial  insurance,  are 
more  advanced  in  promoting  working-class  in- 
terests than  similar  institutions  in  Europe.  The 
American  "way  out"  would  seem  to  be  through 
seeking  economic  justice  and  improving  volun- 
tary organizations  and  systems.  A  few  dollars  a 
month  more  in  the  form  of  wages  to  each  wage 
worker  in  this  country  would  excel  both  in  social 
and  monetary  value  all  that  the  German  wage 
earners  obtain  through  their  government's  vast 
and  complicated  bureaucratic  system  of  working- 
class  relief. 


CHAPTEE  IX. 

THE  WAGE  EARNERS  AND  PRISON  LABOR. 

"For  a  hundred  long  years  organized  labor 
has  been  waging  a  terribly  one-sided  war  against 
the  competition  of  convict  labor."  These  are  not 
the  words  of  any  labor  official,  uttered  either  in 
complaint  or  as  a  boast.  They  are  set  down  as 
one  of  the  findings  of  one  who  has  investigated 
the  convict  contract  labor  system  in  this  country. 

One-sided  indeed  has  the  conflict  so  often  been 
that  trade  unionists  in  many  States  in  which  the 
pernicious  system  has  been  carried  on  have 
accepted  the  fact,  as  a  matter  of  course,  that 
obstacles  to  their  attempts  to  abolish  it  should  be 
the  sentiments  of  the  philanthropically  inclined 
but  short-sighted,  the  emotional  utterances  of 
persons  reflecting  an  uninformed  public  opinion, 
and,  naturally,  the  special  pleadings  to  the  pub- 
lic, accompanied  by  underhand  machinations,  of 
the  two  classes  of  men  directly  controlling  the 
labor  of  the  prisoners — namely,  contractors  and 
prison  managers. 

What  is  assumed  to  be  the  criminal  selfish- 
ness of  the  trade  unionists  in  demanding  for 
themselves  the  work  performed  by  prisoners,  the 
grievous  wrong  done  to  convicts  in  keeping  them 
idle  in  their  cells,  the  sufferings  of  their  families 


AND  PRISON  LABOR  133 

when  deprived  of  even  the  little  wages  they  might 
earn  during  their  terms  of  confinement,  the  cer- 
tainty of  the  convict  falling  into  temptation  when 
released  at  the  end  of  his  term  without  the  pit- 
tance he  might  have  saved  if  kept  at  work  on 
wages,  the  serious  injury  to  society  caused  by 
turning  loose  upon  it  annually  hundreds  or  even 
thousands  of  desperately  impoverished  criminals 
ignorant  of  any  means  of  making  an  honest  liv- 
ing, whereas  they  might  have  been  instructed  in 
good  trades  while  in  prison — on  these  themes 
have  been  written  editorials,  sermons,  political 
speeches,  and  college  men's  theses,  until  it  might 
seem  that  on  this  question  all  the  rest  of  the 
world  were  in  unison  against  the  trade  unionists. 
This,  however,  was  never  really  the  fact. 
There  has  always  been  on  the  side  of  the  union- 
ists a  considerable  body  of  men,  many  of  them 
penologists,  who  had  given  sufficient  study  to  the 
complicated  subject  of  prison  labor  to  be  entitled 
to  pronounce  upon  it  a  well-founded  opinion. 
With  time,  this  group  has  been  steadily  rein- 
forced by  independent  investigators  and  disin- 
terested readers  of  their  reports.  When,  three 
and  a  half  years  ago,  the  National  Committee  on 
Prison  Labor  entered  upon  its  work,  it  was 
found  that  its  members  were  in  practical  agree- 
ment on  the  question  with  the  trade  unionists, 
that  sentiment  among  active  legislators  and  other 
public  leaders  had  been  changing  as  guided  by  a 


134  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

knowledge  of  the  subject,  and  that  hopes  to  lift 
our  prison  labor  systems  up  to  a  plane  that  would 
respond  to  the  demands  of  the  enlightened  judg- 
ment of  competent  penologists  were  reasonably 
well  founded.  The  present  comparatively  ad- 
vanced status  of  the  movement  to  bring  prison 
labor  in  America  into  accordance  with  methods 
approved  by  European  authorities  on  the  subject, 
may  be  attributed,  in  good  part,  to  the  views  of 
the  backwardness  of  our  practices  expressed  by 
foreign  delegates  to  the  International  Prison 
Congress  held  in  Washington  in  1910.  The  pres- 
ident of  that  congress  said  of  America's  prisons: 
"In  these  jails  it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that 
many  of  the  features  linger  which  called  forth 
the  wrath  and  indignation  of  the  great  Howard 
at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century. ' '  The  laws 
passed  within  the  last  few  years  at  the  sessions 
of  a  number  of  our  State  legislatures  providing 
for  changes  in  prison  labor  were  in  themselves 
admissions  of  sad  deficiencies  in  the  methods 
theretofore  pursued. 

It  may  perhaps  be  said  that  at  length  the  tide 
has  turned  and  that  the  public  is  gradually  com- 
ing to  recognize  the  correctness  of  the  position 
of  the  trade  unionists  with  respect  to  prison 
labor.  Assistance  is  coming  to  them  in  putting 
an  end  to  a  most  unhappy  situation,  whether  one 
considers  factors  in  it  which  affect  the  prisoner, 
the  free  laborer,  or  the  community. 


AND  PRISON  LABOE  135 

It  is  natural  for  the  reader  to  ask  why  it  can  be 
affirmed  positively  that  the  trade  unionists  have 
been  in  the  right  on  this  question  when  so  many 
other  well-intentioned  citizens  who  regarded 
themselves  as  well  informed  on  public  matters 
were  in  the  wrong.  The  reply  is  that  union  men, 
especially  those  of  certain  occupations,  on  being 
for  years  brought  constantly  and  intimately  in 
contact  with  the  economic  and  social  conse- 
quences of  contract  prison  labor,  were  driven  by 
merciless  necessity  to  find  a  just  solution  of  the 
problem  involved  in  it  as  a  national  disgrace  and 
social  injury. 

Iron  molders,  cigar-makers,  boot  and  shoe 
makers,  chair-makers  and  other  furniture  work- 
ers, shirt-makers  and  other  garment  workers, 
harness-makers  and  other  leather  goods  work- 
ers, as  well  as  wage  earners  in  a  goodly  list  of 
other  indoor  occupations,  at  one  time  or  other 
in  one  State  or  other,  during  a  long  period  have 
had  driven  home  to  them  through  contract  prison 
labor  a  lesson  in  political  economy  which  many 
good  people  not  wage  workers,  viewing  the  ques- 
tion sentimentally  rather  than  practically,  could 
have  little  opportunity  to  learn.  Only  a  faint 
impression  may  be  gained  when  one  reads  in  an 
encyclopedic  work  on  abstract  economics  such  a 
dictum  as:  "The  price  of  the  surplus  of  a  com- 
modity in  a  market  is  the  price  of  the  entire 
stock,"  but  a  deep  and  lasting  impression  is  re- 


136  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

ceived,  as  from  a  knock-out  blow,  by  a  force  of 
"free"  dollar-a-day  girl  shirt-waist  makers  when 
they  are  discharged  because  the  goods  turned  out 
from  their  employer's  factory  cannot  compete  in 
market  price  with  goods  of  the  same  kind  pro- 
duced for  a  prison  labor  manufacturer  by 
twenty-cents-a-day  convicts.  On  this  economic 
point,  the  New  York  Commissioner  of  Labor  has 
thus  quoted  a  shirt  manufacturer:  "All  goods 
are  sold  by  commercialism,  and  the  lowest  price 
makes  the  price  for  all  as  long  as  the  cheaper 
article  is  on  sale."  In  his  report  for  1910,  the 
Commissioner  of  Labor  of  Missouri  gives  the 
idea  clearly  when  he  says:  "A  bad  feature  for 
the  outside  manufacturers  is  that  convict  goods 
can  be  and  are  sold  to  dealers  and  jobbers  at 
figures  slightly  below  their  own.  Therefore,  it  is 
very  plain  that  all  prison-made  articles  stand  a 
better  chance  of  selling  first,  and  the  demand 
must  exceed  this  output  before  the  jobbers  and 
dealers  can  begin  to  handle  the  products  of  the 
regular  tax-paying  factories  employing  honest 
wage-earning  men  and  women." 

In  Missouri  alone  in  1909  the  output  of  convict 
labor  shops  was  valued  at  $4,708,102.  Now,  it  is 
by  far  the  lesser  factor  in  the  problem  for  that 
State  that  nearly  seventeen  hundred  free  indus- 
trial wage  earners  were  in  that  year  thrown  out 
of  work  through  the  contract  labor  of  that  num- 
ber of  prisoners,  with  a  loss  to  free  labor  of 


AND  PRISON  LABOR  137 

$758,000  in  wages,  as  computed  by  the  Commis- 
sioner. The  portentous  factor  to  society  was  the 
demoralization  of  the  markets  through  the 
prison-labor  goods,  with  ruinous  consequences  to 
the  free-labor  manufacturers,  necessitating  low 
wages  for  their  employes  and  perhaps  the  tempo- 
rary or  even  permanent  closing  of  factories. 
When  one  remembers  that  the  case  of  Missouri 
is  the  case  of  every  State  tolerating  the  convict 
contract  system,  in  all  twenty-nine  two  years 
ago,  he  may  see  the  enormity  of  the  wrong  done 
in  the  United  States  to  the  wage  workers  who 
are  not  convicts  and  to  the  manufacturers  who 
are  not  privileged  to  have  their  goods  made  by 
convicts  in  prison  factories,  with  the  advantages 
of  free  rent,  power,  and  heat  and  an  untaxed 
plant. 

Left  to  themselves,  the  free  manufacturers  in 
an  industry  can  in  a  general  way  so  conduct  it 
as  either  to  minimize  the  occasional  waste  from 
over-production  or  to  overtake  the  market  on  the 
occurrence  of  a  shortage  in  production.  In  the 
course  of  years  they  can  maintain  approximately 
an  equilibrium  of  trade,  resulting  on  the  whole 
in  fairly  steady  work  for  the  wage  earners  and 
average  gains  to  the  investors  in  the  business. 
But,  to  a  number  of  industries,  of  all  the  circum- 
stances which  vitiate  the  natural  course  of  free 
production,  prison  labor  has  long  been  one  of 
the  most  hurtful  and  vexatious.  Fully  thirty 


138  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

years  ago  the  stove  manufacturers  of  New  York, 
in  petitioning  the  Legislature  to  do  away  with 
iron  molding  in  Sing  Sing,  represented  that  as  a 
body  they  could,  if  the  State  took  its  hands  off 
them,  provide  for  the  average  annual  consump- 
tion of  their  goods  at  remunerative  prices,  with- 
out serious  fluctuation  in  their  scale  of  wages  or 
their  number  of  employes.  Contract  prison 
products,  however,  made  the  total  output  and  its 
market  prices  ruinously  uncertain.  In  New 
York,  the  contest  between  the  two  classes  of 
metal  manufacturers,  free  and  prison,  ran 
through  decades.  It  was  largely  the  efforts  of 
the  molders'  union,  associated  with  other  labor 
organizations,  which  brought  about  the  constitu- 
tional amendment  of  1895,  by  which  was  intro- 
duced what  is  now  known  as  the  ''State  use" 
system,  putting  an  end  in  New  York  to  contract 
prison  labor. 

A  barbarous  social  abuse  certain  to  arise  from 
the  establishment  of  contract  prison  labor  lies 
in  securing  the  needed  laborers.  It  would  not 
do  to  have  the  contractors  suffer  through  want 
of  employes!  A  significant  light  was  thrown  on 
this  phase  of  the  subject  in  testimony  given  at 
Washington  before  a  sub-committee  of  the  House 
of  Representatives  three  years  ago,  relative  to  a 
report  of  the  Baltimore  grand  jury  in  January, 
1907.  A  passage  in  this  report  read:  "Owing 
to  the  high  value  of  labor,  we  find  the  authorities 


AND  PRISON  LABOR  139 

of  our  penal  institutions  anxious  for  long-term 
prisoners,  in  order  that  their  financial  showing 
shall  be  improved  and  that  they  may  get  appro- 
priations for  new  buildings,  on  the  ground  of 
their  being  entirely  or  partially  self-supporting. 
This  is  very  commendable"!  The  Maryland 
penitentiary  is  one  of  the  shirt  trust  factories! 
The  process  of  legally  putting  poor  and  ignorant 
black  men  to  work  in  the  Southern  mines  as  con- 
vict laborers  has  all  the  look  of  a  villainous  form 
of  conscription:  of  1,350  convicts  in  the  Alabama 
mines  on  January  1,  1911,  less  than  10  per  cent, 
were  white.  The  writer  referred  to  in  the 
opening  paragraph  declares  that  of  2,591 
persons  imprisoned  in  1910  in  the  New  Haven 
(Conn.)  County  Jail,  fully  2,000  "had  not 
committed  any  crime  at  all."  Nearly  400  had 
been  sentenced  for  a  "breach  of  the  peace" 
("street  rows,  family  rows,  clothes-line  quarrels, 
and  the  like") ;  1,115  for  drunkenness  ("for  the 
most  part  convivials  who  had  had  one  glass  too 
many") ;  187  for  trespassing  on  railroad  prop- 
erty ("an  offense  which  most  of  us  have  com- 
mitted in  the  course  of  a  cross-country  tramp") ; 
and  161  for  vagrancy  ("which  means,  as  a  rule, 
an  unemployed  workingman  looking  for  a  job"). 
The  real  purpose,  the  writer  asserted,  in  con- 
fining these  men  in  jail  was  to  grind  out  profits 
for  the  prison  contractor.  The  New  Haven 
County  Jail  is  one  of  the  chair  trust  factories ! 


140  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

How  many  men  and  women  of  the  needle 
trades  in  the  United  States,  it  may  be  asked, 
have  seen  their  jobs  taken  from  them  through 
prison  labor — just  as  the  employes  of  four  shirt 
factories  in  Baltimore,  after  the  panic  of  1907, 
were  discharged,  doomed  to  idleness,  when  the 
firm  employing  them  transferred  their  sewing- 
machines  to  the  Maryland  Penitentiary,  to  give 
the  prisoners  work  at  full  time?  How  many  in- 
dustrial wage  workers  have  seen  the  places  of 
their  employment  close  through  their  employer's 
inability  to  compete  with  a  manufacturer  work- 
ing convicts — just  as  was  the  case  of  a  chair- 
making  company  which  after  thirty  years  in  the 
business  was  forced  to  discontinue  turning  out  a 
certain  grade  of  goods  made  for  it  by  free 
employes  at  $1.50  to  $3.00  a  day,  in  competition 
with  convicts  at  30  to  50  cents  a  day  ?  How  many 
poor,  unfortunate  blacks  and  whites  have  known 
while  at  work  in  prison  or  mine  that  they  had 
been  arrested,  not  to  be  punished  as  law- 
breakers, but  to  be  worked  for  a  combination  of 
prison  keepers  and  slave-driving  prison  labor 
contractors — just  as  may  be  the  case  today  when- 
ever the  temptation  and  the  power  exists  for 
treacherous  authority  and  unscrupulous  greed  to 
seize  and  exploit  weakness  and  helplessness? 
Thousands,  even  tens  of  thousands  of  American 
citizens  have  in  one  or  other  of  these  ways  been 
mercilessly  and  infamously  robbed  of  their  labor, 


AND  PRISON  LABOR  141 

of  their  time,  either  of  which  means  so  much  of 
their  very  lives.  All  these  sufferers  had  relatives, 
or  friends,  or  fellow-workers  who  witnessed  their 
cruel  and  unjust  fate  or  heard  the  story  of  it,  and 
these,  with  the  victims,  have  no  doubt  wondered, 
in  righteously  rebellious  spirit,  where  were  law 
and  justice  and  mercy  and  Christianity,  while 
such  shocking  evils  could  be  tolerated  by  society. 

Is  there  a  confirmed  criminal  class  in  this 
country,  skeptical  of  purity  in  the  law  and  benefi- 
cence in  its  institutions?  Is  there  a  growing 
defiance  of  the  public  officials?  Is  there  a  wide- 
spread conviction  among  the  lowly  that  to  be 
poor  is  to  be  legitimate  prey  for  cunning  arch- 
thieves  cloaked  in  legal  authority  or  endowed 
with  legal  privileges,  even  to  that  of  jailing  the 
victims  of  poverty  and  working  them  like  slaves? 

When  one  recalls  to  mind  the  enormous  num- 
bers of  poor  people  who  have  suffered  in  some 
form  from  the  blunders  or  the  criminalities  pos- 
sible under  our  prison  labor  systems,  something 
of  the  answer  to  a  perplexing  question  which 
law-abiding  wage  earners  ask  one  another  is  sug- 
gested. The  question  is:  Who  are  the  mob- 
makers  that  suddenly  appear  in  our  cities  in 
times  of  popular  excitement?  Who  are  the  mis- 
sile throwers  and  violent  shouters  of  incendiary 
phrases,  usually  unknown  to  the  unionists,  that 
during  a  lock-out  or  a  strike  make  for  the  thick 
of  the  crowds,  to  act  contrary  to  the  wishes  and 


142  THE  WAGE  EAENEKS 

instructions  of  the  union?  To  what  extent  may 
lawless  outbreaks  be  due  to  the  irrepressible 
sense  of  wrong  done  him  by  society  rankling  in 
the  breast  of  here  one  man  and  there  another, 
feeding  the  latent  mob  spirit,  to  flame  up  with 
the  opportunity  of  manifesting  it  in  public?  It 
is  to  be  remembered  that  on  January  1,  1911,  the 
total  prison  population  of  the  United  States  was 
more  than  one  hundred  thousand,  while  the  total 
number  sent  to  prison  in  the  course  of  the  year 
1910,  for  short  as  well  as  long  terms,  was  more 
than  four  hundred  thousand. 

As  to  a  highly  promising,  if  not  yet  thorough, 
reform  in  prison  labor,  the  principle  has  been 
applied  in  New  York  for  fifteen  years.  Pursuant, 
as  already  mentioned,  to  the  petitions  of  trade 
unionists  and  citizens  who  coincided  with  their 
plan,  the  Constitutional  Convention  of  1894 
adopted  an  amendment  providing  that  only  such 
goods  should  be  made  in  the  prisons  as  were  to 
be  used  in  the  public  institutions  of  the  State  and 
its  subdivisions.  The  August,  1911,  issue  of  the 
"Prison  Labor  Bulletin"  of  the  National  Com- 
mittee on  Prison  Labor,  in  announcing  a  forth- 
coming complete  report  of  the  status  of  New 
York's  prison  industries,  says  it  will  show  that 
under  the  "State  use'*  system  the  prison 
population  cannot,  even  with  greatly  increased 
efficiency,  come  anywhere  near  supplying  the 
market  which  the  law  has  thus  provided  for 


AND  PRISON  LABOR  143 

prison-made  goods.  In  addition,  at  the  Onon- 
daga  Penitentiary,  the  stone  quarry  has  been  so 
developed  as  to  supply  sufficient  work  all  the  year 
round  for  the  convicts  there. 

Here  we  have  methods  for  employing  prison 
labor  which  have  been  shown  through  practice  to 
be  productive,  as  nearly  as  possible,  of  unmixed 
good — viz.,  manufacturing  articles  to  be  used  in 
public  institutions  and  breaking  stones  for  road- 
making.  Further,  some  States  have  successfully 
employed  convicts  in  making  roads. 

It  is  now  generally  agreed  that  convicts  should 
be  paid  for  their  labor  and  that  a  part  of  their 
wages  should  go  to  their  families.  With  these 
features,  the  New  York  program,  supplemented 
by  road-making,  presents  the  leading  requisites 
of  an  effective  salutary  scheme.  Under  it  pris- 
oners may  be  self-sustaining,  as  presumably  they 
were,  on  the  whole,  while  at  liberty.  The  suffer- 
ing of  those  dependent  upon  them  may  be  allevi- 
ated through  a  part  of  their  wages.  The  prison 
products  do  not  disturb  the  markets,  the  effect  of 
supplying  the  public  institutions  amounting  only 
to  a  slight  restriction  of  the  selling  field  for  cer- 
tain manufacturers.  The  factory  wage-workers 
are  not  exposed  to  convict  competition.  The 
convicts  may  be  kept  steadily  at  work,  while 
undergoing  a  helpful  manual  training.  Limita- 
tions are  set  to  the  temptations,  or  opportunities, 
on  the  part  of  prison  superintendents,  wardens, 


144  THE  WAGE  EAENEES 

commissioners — of  whatever  title — for  a  vile  and 
cowardly  graft.  Manufacturers  operating  their 
own  plants  are  rid  of  a  discreditable  class  of 
competitors. 

The  change  in  public  sentiment  is  indicated  by 
the  legislation  on  the  prison  labor  problem  in 
1911.  No  State  in  that  year  gave  new  powers  of 
leasing  or  contracting  for  convict  labor.  Only 
one  extended  the  field  of  its  lessees.  Twenty-one 
made  some  provision  for  State  operation  or 
assumption  of  industries.  Eight  provided  for 
State  consumption,  six  for  regulation  of  prices 
and  standardization  of  products  and  three  for 
the  branding  of  prison-made  articles.  Nine 
authorized  road-making  or  road-stone  crushing 
by  convicts.  Provision  for  radical  changes  in  the 
methods  of  administration  was  made  in  seven 
States.  The  principle  of  relief  for  dependent 
families  of  prisoners  was  given  some  recognition. 
All  told,  a  good  start  was  made  in  the  right 
direction. 

Organized  labor,  the  most  forceful  social  ele- 
ment in  promoting  these  reforms,  can  welcome 
such  opinions  on  prison  labor  as  the  following, 
given  editorially  in  the  employers'  " Mines  and 
Minerals"  for  June,  1911: 

"There  is  no  question  but  that  convicts  should 
be  made  to  work,  and  at  least  earn  their  keep  and 
the  expense  of  maintaining  the  penal  institu- 


AND  PRISON  LABOR  145 

tions,  if  the  products  of  their  labor  do  not  enter 
into  competition  with  those  of  free  labor.  There 
is  a  kind  of  work  they  can  do,  and  it  is  work  that 
interferes  least  with  free  labor.  They  can  crack 
stone  in  the  prison  or  jail  yards,  and  this  cracked 
stone  can  be  effectually  used  to  make,  repair  and 
keep  in  order  the  public  roads.  If  each  State 
would  put  its  prisoners  to  such  use,  it  would 
materially  reduce  the  just  complaints  against 
our  abominable  roads;  and  besides,  the  privi- 
leges and  rights  of  free,  honest  labor  would  be 
interfered  with  less  than  by  any  other  work." 

It  is  true,  with  regard  to  prison  labor,  as  of 
many  another  social  problem,  that  in  defending 
themselves  trade  unionists  have  been  protecting 
not  only  the  interests  of  non-unionists  but  of 
society  in  general. 


CHAPTER  X. 

THE  WAGE  EARNERS — UNION   AND   NON-UNION. 

With  a  population  of  a  hundred  millions  under 
its  flag,  and  a  total  area  almost  equaling  that  of 
Europe,  the  United  States  contains  large 
districts,  together  with  considerable  strata  of 
society  in  every  district,  in  which  non-unionism 
is  the  normal  and  natural  condition  of  the  family 
bread-winners.  In  our  agricultural  States  and 
in  the  dependencies,  wherever,  in  fact,  the  land- 
owner and  the  tiller  of  the  soil  are  one,  or  even 
where  the  qualified  tenant  farmer  is  yet  so  rare 
as  to  be  in  demand,  the  principle  of  trade 
unionism  invariably  makes  slow  headway.  Also, 
among  many  professional  and  commercial  men 
who,  though  offering  their  labor  for  a  hire,  find  it 
difficult  to  establish  a  common  scale — the  expecta- 
tions of  each  being  to  find  himself  some  day  in 
one  of  the  highly  prized  places  of  his  calling — the 
prevailing  spirit  is  decidedly  that  of  competition 
as  against  one  another,  though  it  may  be  that  of 
combination  against  individuals  not  yet  admitted 
to  their  ranks.  Even  members  of  the  typical  pro- 
fessional society  or  league  who  do  not  term  their 
remuneration  wages,  but  fees  or  salaries,  are 
often  unaware  of  having  taken  up  with  trade 


UNION  AND  NON-UNION  147 

union    principles    by    organizing   and   have    no 
sympathy  with  wage  strikers. 

In  the  earlier  days  of  our  Republic,  when  agri- 
culture was  the  pursuit  of  three-fourths  of  the 
population,  individual  initiative,  knowledge  of 
one's  calling,  and  the  virtues  of  personal  thrift 
were  usually  sufficient  to  bring  at  least  a 
modicum  of  success.  At  a  time  when  developing 
trade  unionism  was  absorbing  much  public  atten- 
tion in  Great  Britain,  and  being  hailed  by  the 
working  people  there  as  an  institution  promising 
more  for  their  material  welfare  than  any  other, 
Americans  in  general  were  as  yet  bestowing  upon 
the  organization  of  labor  scarcely  a  passing 
thought.  Eemedies  for  low  wages  or  non-employ- 
ment for  our  wage  workers  of  that  period  were 
to  go  West,  or  to  move  from  place  to  place,  or 
to  change  from  one  occupation  to  another — in 
any  event,  to  " hustle,"  "reach  out,"  with  faith 
in  the  abounding  opportunities  then  existing  in 
the  new  and  rich  land.  The  social  spirit 
encouraged  each  man  to  launch  out  and  do  for 
himself.  "I  paddle  my  own  canoe"  was  a  pop- 
ular boast.  The  individual  proved  his  manhood 
by  getting  ahead — which  almost  invariably 
meant  shrewdness  in  amassing  wealth,  no  matter 
by  whom  produced.  The  oldest  of  the  trade 
unionists  of  this  country  can  remember  when  the 
maxims  which  guided  men  to  prosperity  in  busi- 
ness, or  in  election  to  office,  or  to  prominence  in 


148  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

any  walk  of  life,  were  those  which  imposed  in- 
junctions upon  each  person  to  work  for  himself 
exclusively  and  avoid  entangling  alliances  with 
others,  especially  with  any  of  his  weaker  brethren. 
The  youngest  of  our  trade  unionists  may  every 
day  hear  of  people  who  believe  that  these  maxims 
still  hold  good. 

Trade  unionism  in  this  country  has  had  to 
make  its  way  against  what  was  undoubtedly  the 
original  American  spirit — in  business.  All  citi- 
zens, including  the  farmers,  were  assumed  to  be 
in  business,  producing  and  selling  for  themselves. 
If  a  man  was  not  in  business,  he  was,  if  made  of 
good  stuff,  expected  to  be  on  the  way,  through 
working,  skimping,  and  saving,  to  going  into 
business,  whether  in  agriculture,  trade,  manufac- 
turing, or  a  profession.  To  a  self-made  man  who 
ardently  held  to  this  conception  of  society,  which 
involves  the  principle  that  to  be  successful  one 
must  "rise,"  must  be  an  employer,  must  show 
his  superiority  in  acquisitiveness  over  his  fel- 
lows, the  proposition  that  there  should  be  a  wage- 
workers'  combination,  possibly  to  be  operative 
against  himself,  seemed  almost  a  blasphemous 
breaking  away  from  the  moorings  of  accepted 
morality.  Such  a  union  was  to  his  mind  con- 
temptible, composed  of  an  aggregation  of  fail- 
ures, a  startling  evidence  of  social  degeneracy. 
Many  men,  self-made  or  made  big  through 
heredity,  their  dependents  and  those  attached  to 


UNION  AND  NON-UNION  149 

them  by  social  ties,  therefore  felt  it  a  bounden 
duty  to  stamp  out  trade  unionism,  to  continue  to 
uphold  the  ancient  precepts  that  led  to  the  suc- 
cess they  had  worshiped,  to  proclaim  that  the 
possession  of  property  was  evidence  that  the 
possessor  was  a  mental  giant,  to  hold  that  an 
employer's  business  entitled  him  to  manage  it — 
and  the  employes — as  he  willed. 

The  opportunities  existing  in  a  rich,  sparsely 
settled  country,  the  emulation  afforded  in  every 
community  through  the  example  of  its  self-made 
men,  the  social  atmosphere  in  which  adulation  of 
the  strong  and  independent  was  accepted  as  a 
phase  of  truth  itself — these  were  factors  giving 
nourishment  to  the  spirit  of  non-unionism. 
Another,  and  a  most  notable,  factor  arose  with 
the  appearance  of  labor  organization.  It  was 
made  possible  through  the  crudities  in  the  form 
and  operations  of  the  first  organizations  and  the 
natural  blunders  of  their  representatives — 
blunders  which  persist,  on  occasions,  to  the 
present  time,  when  the  organized  are  under  an 
improved  discipline. 

In  the  Old  World  the  uprising  of  labor  in  any 
form  through  political  parties  or  through  trade 
organizations,  could  not  be  met  by  the  arguments, 
springing  from  equality  in  voting  or  in  material 
opportunity,  which  in  this  country  once  had  in 
them  some  show  of  reason.  In  the  thickly  settled 
countries  of  Europe  the  masses  have  had  few 


150  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

opportunities,  even  in  education;  there  has  been 
no  semblance  of  equality  among  the  citizens, 
except  as  the  poor  were  equally  and  miserably 
poor;  the  economists  and  other  teachers  of  the 
public  of  Europe  have  therefore  favored,  rather 
than  discouraged,  labor  organization.  Non- 
unionism,  with  its  wage  workers,  was  never  an 
normal  or  natural  situation.  Unionism,  as  soon 
as  serfdom  was  actually  put  aside,  was  a  logical 
outcome  of  working-class  liberty.  In  America, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  masses  of  white  wage 
workers  have  passed  from  the  stage  of  compara- 
tive economic  freedom  of  forty  years  ago  to  a 
social  stage  approximating  that  of  the  industrial 
countries  of  Europe.  Consequently,  the  area, 
social  and  geographical,  for  the  American  non- 
unionist  has  been  contemporaneously  narrowing. 
The  premises  for  his  reasoning,  in  self-defense 
or  apology,  have  been  gradually  disappearing. 
His  left-over  maxims,  fitting  to  a  period  of  crude 
and  mistaken  individualism,  are  no  longer  appro- 
priate to  the  times.  The  lot  of  one  man,  year  in 
and  year  out,  in  any  of  our  great  industries,  is 
the  lot  of  the  mass — in  nine  cases  in  ten ;  in  nine- 
teen in  twenty ;  or  in  ninety-nine  in  one  hundred. 
With  few  exceptions,  the  day  for  the  industrial 
wage  worker  to  study  purely  personal  advantage, 
the  over-reaching  of  his  fellows,  or  promotion 
and  finally  partnership  through  race-horse  strain 
and  effort,  has  gone  by.  The  mass  of  the  workers 


UNION  AND  NON-UNION  151 

have  covered  the  whole  game  of  climbing  up,  on 
the  shoulders  of  others,  as  taught  in  the  circles 
which  profit  by  it,  with  a  full  set  of  queries.  A 
few  of  these  are:  What  proportion  of  us  can 
possibly  win  the  few  glittering  prizes  ever  dan- 
gled before  the  eyes  of  us  all?  Of  what  profit  is 
it  to  the  rest  when  one  of  us,  or  a  score  in  a  thou- 
sand, is  set  up  above  the  others?  Why  should 
we  not  study,  for  the  common  betterment,  the 
methods  which  will  surely  yield  equal  benefits  to 
the  entire  brotherhood?  While  the  hardships  of 
daily  experience  have  been  divesting  the  wage- 
worker  himself  of  the  superstition  that  the  condi- 
tions of  half  a  century  ago  still  survive  as  guides 
and  bases  for  his  hopes,  his  plans,  his  activities 
in  getting  along  in  the  world,  converting  him  from 
non-unionist  to  unionist,  the  theoretical  territory 
of  non-unionism — that  is,  individualism — still 
has  strongholds  in  our  courts  and  our  colleges. 
The  lawyer,  dealing  in  precedents,  and  the  pro- 
fessor, looking  to  history,  are  apt  to  see  what 
was  instead  of  what  is.  The  wage  worker,  on  the 
contrary,  knows  by  contact  with  his  tasks  of  job- 
hunting  and  job-holding  what  actual  conditions 
are.  Hence,  while  the  college  president-emeritus 
has  praise  for  the  non-unionist,  the  union  worker 
regards  him  as  usually  unfaithful  to  his  class, 
though  granting  that  occasionally  he  may  yet  be 
a  product  of  the  conditions  surviving  in  the  side 
currents  of  agricultural  or  industrial  life  where 


152  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

the  general  social  situation  of  times  gone  by  has 
been  still  to  some  extent  perpetuated. 

In  this  survey  of  the  origin  and  progress  of 
the  two  sentiments — non-union  and  union,  indi- 
vidual and  co-operative — which  in  this  country 
bear  upon  the  organization  of  labor,  we  arrive  at 
an  understanding  of  the  possibilities  of  honesty 
and  principle  animating  men  on  either  side.  The 
judge  on  the  bench  may  be  acting  in  accordance 
with  his  lights,  which  are  legal  tomes,  in  render- 
ing judgments  that  are  absurd  when  viewed  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  spirit  and  social  needs  of 
today.  The  old-time  college  professor,  a  closet 
man,  may  be  loyal  to  ideals  of  citizenship  which 
were  possible  when  his  favorite  authorities  in 
sociology  gave  the  world  their  heavy  volumes. 
The  college  student,  fresh  from  the  farm  or  from 
the  home  of  a  professional  or  business  man,  may 
lightly  play  strike-breaker  as  a  lark,  or  for  the 
extra  cash  needed  to  pay  his  way  to  a  diploma, 
not  realizing  his  social  crime,  as  seen  by  the 
organized  workers.  The  journeyman  worker 
coming  from  a  country  town  may  be  but  follow- 
ing the  only  custom  of  which  he  has  had  practical 
knowledge  when  he  takes  a  job  left  vacant  by 
strikers,  although  this  is  nowadays  a  rare  thing. 
The  usual  founts  of  knowledge  and  influence  from 
which  the  plain  people  in  small  communities 
absorb  their  views  of  life  and  its  obligations — as 


UNION  AND  NON-UNION  153 

represented  by  the  school  teacher,  the  village 
newspaper,  the  "influential  business  man,"  or 
the  speech-maker  on  patriotic  occasions — are 
rarely  engaged  in  the  active  propaganda  of  trade 
unionism. 

When,  however,  we  mingle  among  the  wage 
earners  of  the  industrial  centers,  of  the  railroad 
world,  of  the  mines,  and  the  undertakings  in  gen- 
eral requiring  workers  in  large  numbers,  we 
speedily  find  ourselves  in  a  society  by  itself.  It 
is  living  in  close  contact  with  the  harsh  facts  of 
today;  it  is  educated  in  branches  of  economics 
not  usually  emphasized  in  the  college  curriculum ; 
it  is  fighting  the  battle  of  the  worker  pushed  hard 
by  conditions  of  the  live  labor  market;  it  is 
animated  by  a  moral  code  which  is  the  outcome 
of  the  necessity  of  its  defensive  warfare;  it  is 
busied  in  divers  ways  with  advancing  the  welfare 
of  not  only  the  organized  workers  but  of  all — 
men,  women  and  children — in  the  wage-working 
ranks. 

One  is  enabled  to  affirm,  in  sober  earnest,  that 
the  sentiment  of  this  wage-workers'  society  in 
the  United  States  today  is  almost  wholly  union. 
The  statistics  of  the  present  paid-up  membership 
of  the  American  Federation  of  Labor,  the  rail- 
road brotherhoods,  and  the  as  yet  unfederated 
unions  show  very  nearly  three  million  members. 
But  this  number  does  not  express  the  sum  total 
of  unionists  as  it  exists  in  fact.  Unionism,  in  its 


154  THE  WAGE  EAENEES 

ebb  and  flow,  is  made  the  more  possible  to  a  larger 
and  larger  number  through  union  sentiment  con- 
tinually preceding  organization  itself.  Beyond 
the  forces  organized  and  paying  dues  to  the 
unions  are  the  masses  that  long  to  be  with  their 
comrades  who  are  bearing  the  burdens  of  labor's 
uplift  through  union  methods.  A  large  propor- 
tion but  await  the  opportune  time  to  fall  into  line. 
In  the  progress  of  organization  errors  have  been 
made  which  for  a  time  have  caused  serious  losses 
to  the  unions;  there  has  been  on  occasion  poor 
leadership ;  unwise  strikes  have  taken  place.  But, 
whatever  the  cause  of  their  falling  away,  it  may 
be  confidently  asserted  that  after  men  have  once 
experienced  the  help  of  the  union,  never  will  they 
be  again  satisfied  with  the  state  of  non-unionism. 
They  know  that  most  of  the  betterments  they  en- 
joy come  to  them,  and  are  maintained,  through 
the  power  of  organized  labor.  Three  millions, 
therefore,  is  too  small  a  number  for  trade  union- 
ism. If  it  were  as  easy  for  men  to  enroll  them- 
selves in  a  union  as  in  a  political  party,  trade 
unionism  in  America  would  today  count  its  four 
million — or  five  or  six,  whatever  number  is  neces- 
sary to  cover  the  vastly  predominating  force  in 
all  the  trades  and  callings  that  have  been  covered 
by  our  modern  industrialism.  It  is  indeed  true; 
trade  unionism  envelops  in  its  folds  more  than 
are  enrolled  in  the  unions. 
When  we  begin  an  estimate  of  the  number  of 


UNION  AND  NON-UNION  155 

active  non-union  wage  workers,  we  quickly  come 
to  a  halt.  Professional  strike-breakers  are  not 
non-unionists.  They  are  mercenaries,  on  hire  to 
whoever  pays  them  their  price.  Should  the 
unions  outbid  the  employers,  they  could  buy  the 
strike-breakers,  whose  principles  have  nothing  to 
do  with  honest  work.  Their  character  is  notori- 
ous ;  the  jest  of  the  newspapers,  the  thorn  in  the 
side  of  employers,  the  worry  and  surprise  of  the 
innocent  university  leaders  who  once  deemed  non- 
unionists  heroes.  The  steady  and  usually  fair 
wage  worker  who  at  times  refuses  to  come  out  on 
strike  and  give  up  his  job  may  have  yet  in  him 
the  making  of  a  true  union  man.  He  may  be  in- 
sufficiently educated,  he  may  have  had  sore  ex- 
periences with  the  pioneers  of  organization  in  his 
trade,  he  may  feel  that  unnecessary  sacrifices  are 
being  demanded  of  him  and  his  shopmates;  yet 
time  may  bring  him  around  ready  to  perform  any 
duty  the  good  of  his  fellow-men  requires. 

No  workingman  of  principle  can  rest  content 
outside  organized  labor  unless  he  has  not  con- 
sidered the  questions  that  its  progress  has  evoked 
to  society.  What,  for  example,  has  non-unionism 
to  offer  in  place  of  the  insurance  features  of 
unionism?  The  answer  is,  mostly,  some  form  of 
pauperism  or  mortifying  dependence.  But  for 
unionism,  would  there  exist  a  single  State  Labor 
Bureau  in  the  country?  Whence  could  be  ob- 
tained the  enormous  body  of  facts  recorded  in  the 


156  THE  WAGE  EAENEES 

bureau  reports  if  not  from  them!  How  could 
trade  agreements  be  reached,  except  through  the 
unions  ?  For,  it  is  a  certainty,  non-unionism  can- 
not promise  a  condition  in  which  there  would  be 
no  strikes.  The  ugliest  of  outbreaks  are  at  times 
by  non-union  labor.  What  would  the  prevailing 
workday  be  but  for  the  unions?  Have,  or  have 
they  not,  brought  the  eight-hour  day  to  many  of 
the  trades?  What  as  to  the  laws  for  the  protec- 
tion of  workers  in  mines,  in  the  factories,  on  the 
railroads?  Have  non-unionists  ever  fought  child 
labor?  Under  the  heel  of  the  tyrannical  shop 
foreman,  under  the  rigid  rules  of  avaricious  cor- 
porations, under  the  neglect  of  society,  what 
would  be  the  daily  existence  of  the  wage  workers 
should  they  accept  permanently  the  tenets  of  non- 
unionism  ? 

When  such  questions  are  troubling  the  con- 
science of  the  wage  worker  not  enrolled  in  a 
labor  organization,  he  finds  himself  going  further 
in  self-examination.  Has  he  a  right  to  remain 
standing  aside  from  the  men  who  are  doing  what 
they  can  for  their  fellows?  Would  he  not  be 
guilty  of  a  form  of  treason  to  his  fellow  workers, 
and  of  short-sightedness  respecting  his  own  in- 
terests, in  taking  the  place  of  a  striker?  The 
conditions  of  labor  being  what  they  are,  is  there 
any  truth  whatever  in  the  claim  that  any  wage- 
worker  has  the  moral  or  social  right  to  work  how, 
when  and  where  he  pleases?  No  more  has  he 
than  has  a  man  a  right  to  injure  himself. 


UNION  AND  NON-UNION  157 

In  among  the  workers,  the  non-unionist  can 
offer  no  live  argument  for  his  beliefs,  no  moral 
principle  in  self-defense,  no  sentiment  of  brother- 
hood, no  just  reason  for  standing  aloof  from  his 
fellows. 


CHAPTER  XL 

THE  WAGE  EARNERS  AND  THE  SOCIAL  UPLIFT. 

When,  some  time  ago,  public  attention  was  di- 
rected to  the  women  "core"  makers  in  Massa- 
chusetts foundries,  the  necessity  for  the  good 
offices  of  trade  unions  in  the  case  was  plainly  seen 
by  conservative  editors  and  other  public  teachers 
who  seldom  have  a  good  word  for  organized 
labor.  They  took  it  for  granted  that  the  unions 
were  to  be  prominent  among  the  organizations 
which  should  set  about  removing  from  American 
society  the  blemish  existing  in  the  spectacle  of 
womanhood,  degraded,  as  must  needs  be  in  the 
occupation  in  question,  through  the  circumstances 
of  work  beyond  the  strength  of  the  sex,  of 
promiscuous  workshop  associations,  and  of  un- 
conventional exposure  of  the  person  in  the  fierce 
heat  of  the  foundry.  Quarrel  with  the  unions  as 
they  may,  even  the  "last  ditchers"  among  the  ad- 
versaries of  trade  unionism  must  finally  admit 
that  the  sentiments  of  the  wage-earning  class  are 
entitled  to  a  hearing,  backed  by  an  effective  force, 
and  that  to  obtain  that  hearing  and  to  give  it  force 
the  obvious  essential  is  organization.  In  so  far  as 
concession  on  these  points  is  made  by  opponents, 
they  show  themselves  to  be  sympathizers  with  the 
union.  They  acknowledge  it  has  a  place  in  society. 


AND  THE  SOCIAL  UPLIFT  159 

That  such  a  sympathy  and  acknowledgment  have  a 
much  firmer  hold  in  the  average  stubborn  employ- 
er 's  heart  and  mind  than  he  will  admit,  trade  union 
officials  are  led  to  believe  through  their  expe- 
rience as  conferees  in  such  matters  as  trade  agree- 
ments and  much  legislation  protective  of  the 
workers.  A  common  observation  among  employ- 
ers who  are  pretty  stiff  fighters  with  the  labor 
organizations  among  their  employes  is,  "Can- 
didly, if  I  were  a  wage  worker  I'd  be  a  member 
of  the  union. ' ' 

This  avowal  is  honest  and  human.  It  is  equiv- 
alent to  declaring  that  every  one  who  is  oppressed 
rightfully  calls  for  fair  play.  This  the  wage- 
earner  standing  alone  cannot  get,  as  all  employers 
are  fully  aware.  Therefore,  under  some  stress, 
the  last  biased  one  among  them  will  express  a 
willingness  to  comply  with  the  rules  of  the  game 
in  the  struggle  for  life  and  opportunity.  Now, 
all  games  involving  struggle  are  typified  in  the 
familiar  illustration  of  the  street  fight  between 
two  urchins  surrounded  by  a  group  of  youthful 
spectators,  who  constitute  themselves  judge  and 
jury.  If  the  combatants  are  unequally  pitted,  the 
weaker  must  be  given  advantages  in  some  form 
before  the  fight  can  go  on.  Whatever*the  varied 
interests  of  the  lookers-on,  all  join  in  upholding 
the  traditional  rules,  even  those  who  have  special 
reasons  for  taking  sides,  and  the  fighter  who 
refuses  to  proceed  under  the  general  judgment  of 


160  THE  WAGE  EABNEES 

right  dealing  is  accounted  unfair,  and  he  loses  hia 
place  in  respectable  society  among  boys. 

Hence  it  may  with  good  reason  be  asked :  Who, 
in  fact,  does  not  sympathize  with  the  organized 
labor  movement?  Who  will  say  it  is  not  called 
for  by  existing  social  conditions?  Who  does  not 
know  that  the  employer  has  the  best  of  it  over  the 
wage  earner  who  seeks  work  merely  as  one  in  an 
unorganized  mass?  Society  on  occasions  may  be 
vexed  with  the  organized  laborer ;  it  may  at  times 
regard  him  as  unwise;  it  may,  in  its  capacity  as 
jury,  pronounce  against  him  should  he  strike  a 
foul  blow;  but  it  would  like  to  see  removed  the 
disadvantages  under  which  labor  is  conducting  its 
fight  for  a  fair  share  in  the  fruits  of  the  general 
toil. 

It  can  be  safely  laid  down  as  an  indisputable 
proposition  that  the  nearer  the  systematic  ob- 
server gets  to  the  laborer,  and  the  longer  he 
studies  the  labor  movement,  the  more  lively  are 
his  sympathies  with  the  laborer  and  the  firmer 
are  his  convictions  that,  on  the  whole  and  all 
things  considered,  the  labor  movement  of  this 
country  has  done  whatever  good  has  come  within 
its  possibilities.  It  sometimes  happens  that  social 
workers,  fresh  from  their  college  books  after  being 
brought  up  in  homes  of  the  professional  or  busi- 
ness classes,  find  themselves  acting  on  the  erro- 
neous assumption  that  "working  people,"  indefi- 
nitely, need  their  ministrations.  But  they  soon 


AND  THE  SOCIAL  UPLIFT          161 

find  that  they  have  been  theoretically  studying, 
not  the  working  classes  but  merely  the  statistics 
of  exceptions,  the  reports  of  conditions  among 
social  strata  not  representative  of  wage  workers 
in  general,  indeed,  the  state  of  affairs  among  the 
dependent  and  unsocialized.  The  novitiate  social 
worker  resembles  in  his  inexperience  those  mem- 
bers of  the  police  force  who,  in  their  daily  famil- 
iarity with  crime  and  their  comparative  isolation 
from  normal  life,  are  in  danger  of  regarding  all 
men  as  potentially  criminal.  But  the  social  work- 
er's calling  gives  him  in  time  the  practical  advan- 
tages of  getting  close  to  the  people,  in  their  homes 
and  at  their  work,  and  of  studying  their  own  spe- 
cial organizations.  In  the  early  stages  of  his 
studies  at  first  hand  he  finds  himself  asking: 
What  institution  stands  at  the  head  in  promoting 
the  welfare  of  the  wage  earners?  Or,  it  may  be 
the  query  is :  How  are  they  best  helping  them- 
selves, besides  practicing  individual  thrift?  He 
finds  answer  in  such  facts  as  these :  The  managers 
of  philanthropic  employment  offices,  of  church 
benevolent  societies,  of  eleemosynary  agencies  in 
general,  are  united  in  testifying  to  the  care  the 
trade  unions  extend  to  their  own  unemployed, 
necessitous,  or  sick  members.  The  social  worker 
thereupon  feels  that  in  doing  such  work  on  so 
large  a  scale  the  unions  rightfully  hold  society  as 
indebted  to  them.  Pursuing  his  inquiries  as  to 


162  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

unionism  further,  he  finds  that  in  every  direction 
in  which  amelioration  of  the  lot  of  the  worker  is 
directly  practicable,  the  unions  are  actively  at 
work.  As  the  voice  of  labor,  they  are  naturally  the 
chief  reliance  of  the  agents  of  the  State  and  na- 
tional labor  bureaus;  they  have  for  decades  been 
foremost  in  pressing  upon  the  attention  of  legis- 
lators the  necessity  for  laws  protective  of  wage 
working  women  and  children;  they  give  life  to 
these  laws,  to  the  benefit  of  even  the  non- 
unionists;  they  conduct  their  own  schemes  of  in- 
surance ;  they  enter  a  field  not  touched  by  philan- 
thropy when  they  shrink  the  workday  and  expand 
the  wage  bill  they  present  to  the  employer.  The 
indebtedness  of  society  to  the  unions  thence 
becomes  a  theme  in  the  writings  of  the  social 
worker,  as  it  is  in  the  reports  of  the  government 
agent,  and  of  all  other  systematic  observers, 
almost  without  exception.  The  trade  union  uplift 
of  the  wage  earners  is  referred  to  in  many  pages 
in  the  volumes  resulting  from  the  Pittsburgh 
"survey."  It  has  been  an  accepted  commonplace 
fact  in  labor  bureau  reports.  Rev.  Dr.  Washing- 
ton Gladden,  of  Columbus,  gives  his  testimony 
upon  it  in  a  work  recently  issued. 

The  casual  reader  unacquainted  with  either  the 
reports  of  the  unions  or  with  other  works  of  ref- 
erence on  the  subject  of  union  help  to  members  in 
misfortune,  will  doubtless  feel  that  indefinite 
statement  might  be  rendered  more  palpable 


AND  THE  SOCIAL  UPLIFT          163 

through  quotation  of  trustworthy  figures.  He  can 
be  obliged.  For  example,  he  may  verify  at  almost 
any  city  public  library,  the  statement  that  in  the 
last  ten  years  the  trade  unions  of  Great  Britain 
have  used  their  funds  to  the  extent  of  twenty  mil- 
lion dollars  in  relieving  the  distress  of  unemploy- 
ment. Unfortunately,  in  this  country,  many  of  our 
unions  do  not  publish  the  statistics  of  the  insur- 
ance or  benevolent  branches  of  their  operations. 
However,  in  1912,  six  out  of  sixty-nine  interna- 
tional American  Federation  of  Labor  unions  re- 
porting had  expended  out-of-work  benefits  to  the 
amount  of  $215,398.  Death  benefits  reported  for 
1908  (round  numbers  being  given  for  convenience) 
amounted  to  $1,257,000;  1909,  $1,187,000;  1910, 
$1,320,000;  1911,  $1,471,400.  Sick  benefits,  1908, 
$593,000;  1909,  $731,000;  1910,  $719,000;  1911, 
$818,000 ;  1912,  $1,649,000.  But  how  imperfectly  the 
benevolent  features  of  the  unions  are  represented 
in  these  haphazard  statistics  is  seen  in  the  fact 
that  they  include  no  mention,  for  instance,  of  the 
expenditures  by  the  International  Typographical 
Union,  in  1912,  for  the  Union  Printers '  Home, 
$99,000;  and  for  old-age  pensions,  $169,000;— 
these,  besides  the  burial  benefits  of  $32,000. 
These  sums,  for  this  union,  do  not  include  the 
outlay  of  local  unions  for  supplemental  death 
benefits,  or  of  the  local  or  workshop  sick  benefit 
societies,  to  which  only  union  men  are  admitted. 
In  1912,  the  Typographical  Union  buried  655  mem- 


164  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

bers,  gave  $5.00  a  week  as  a  pension  to  1,038  mem- 
bers over  60  years  of  age,  when  out  of  work,  and 
maintained  130  sick  or  aged  members  at  the  Union 
Printers '  Home.  In  the  railroad  brotherhoods,  as 
is  quite  well  known,  the  death  and  accident  insur- 
ance features  carry  the  reader  to  the  considera- 
tion of  enormous  totals.  In  all,  the  mutual  help 
of  the  trade  unionists  is  on  a  scale  so  great,  with 
results  of  such  importance  to  society,  that  the 
question  may  with  propriety  be  raised  as  to  what 
would  be  the  fate  of  our  American  working  classes 
in  the  absence  of  this  inseparable  function  of  the 
unions. 

Nor  have  all  the  forms  of  trade  union  benevo- 
lence been  mentioned.  Seldom  is  there  a  union 
meeting  held  at  which  "the  hat"  is  not  passed 
around  for  a  collection  to  serve  a  charitable  pur- 
pose. On  the  union  factory  bulletin  board  is  often 
posted  a  call  for  help  for  an  unfortunate  shop- 
mate.  A  sanitary  committee,  uncompensated,  is 
no  rare  feature  in  a  force  of  union  men  or  women. 
Contributors  to  a  shop  sick  fund  take  turns  in 
personally  attending  on  the  sick  or  directing  the 
burial  of  the  dead.  But — the  uninformed  inquirer 
will  be  prompted  to  ask — are  not  all  these  forms 
of  mutual  help  easily  possible  also  to  non-union- 
ists f  To  this  the  reply  must  be  that  they  are  not. 
Non-unionists  rarely  hold  meetings,  or  have  shop 
societies,  or  appoint  committees.  These  features 
imply  organization,  which  in  any  form  is  not 


AND  THE  SOCIAL  UPLIFT          165 

encouraged  by  non-union  employers.  Even  the 
occasional  benefit  associations  of  non-union  em- 
ployes, which  rest  under  the  suspicion  of  possibly 
becoming  the  nucleus  of  striking  labor  organiza- 
tions, are  usually  managed  under  the  rules  and 
direction  of  the  interested  employers.  The  pen- 
sion features  of  the  railroads  and  other  large  cor- 
porations, schemes  to  forestall  union  effort  by 
binding  the  employe  to  his  job,  are  economically  a 
detriment  to  society  in  destroying  the  mobility  of 
labor,  in  closing  the  labor  market  to  men  nearing 
a  possible  pension  age,  ai^d  in  tending  to  suppress 
the  activities  of  trade  unionism.  On  the  latter 
point,  however,  the  intentions  of  the  schemers 
have  in  frequent  cases  been  defeated,  when  the 
employes,  loyal  to  their  fellows  rather  than  to  the 
employers  who  have  set  the  pension  bait  for  them, 
have  courageously  adopted  union  methods. 

Whether  this  necessarily  somewhat  sketchy 
presentation  of  the  purely  humane  side  of  trade 
unionism  is  suggestive  of  the  truth  may  be 
verified,  or  contradicted,  by  a  considerable  num- 
ber of  that  profession  which  of  recent  years  has 
seriously  taken  up  a  study  of  the  labor  movement. 
This  is  the  ministry  of  the  church.  There  was 
a  period,  which  to  the  veterans  of  the  labor  move- 
ment seems  hardly  yet  passed,  when  it  was  taken 
for  granted  that  clergymen,  from  their  education 
and  associations  and  the  habit  of  regarding  .alms- 
giving as  including  much  if  not  the  most  that  is  in 


166  THE  WAGE  EAENERS 

charity,     were    unable    to     comprehend    trade 
unionism.    To  the  unionists  fell  the  task  of  teach- 
ing the  church  the  evil  economic  effects  of  its  rep- 
resentatives finding,  or  providing,  work  for  the 
needy  at  low  wages,  or  for  the  young  children  of 
poor  widows,  or  for  the  non-unionists  who  wanted 
the  places  that  unionists  had  rejected.    Earnest- 
ness in  the  study  of  social  conditions  under  mod- 
ern industry  has  resulted  in  bringing  the  clergy, 
of  whatever  denomination,  to  accept  labor  organ- 
ization as  a  necessity  of  the  times.    In  many  cases 
ministers  have  first  been  attracted  to  the  benevo- 
lent work  of  the  unions,  the  set  of  facts  therein 
presented  touching  the  tender  heart  and  not  very 
profound  conscientiousness  that  sees  high  merit  In 
giving  something  to  those  in  misfortune.     The 
next  step — more  difficult,  requiring  broader  ob- 
servation, clearer  and  closer  thought,  and  a  con- 
science keenly  selective  of  social  values — has  come 
with  time.    Today,  many  of  the  denominations  as 
such,  and  the  prevailing  opinion  among  clergymen 
as  individuals,  have  pronounced  for  the  unions. 
When  Dr.  Gladden  in  his  latest  work  practically 
puts  labor  organization  on  trial  and  gives  a  ver- 
dict in  its  favor,  when  Rev.  Charles  Stelzle  year 
by  year  issues  his  weekly  letters  in  favor  of  the 
unions  and  regularly  attends  labor  conventions, 
when  Rabbi  Wise  delivers  one  of  his  glowing 
eulogiums  on  union  labor,  when  Cardinal  Gibbons 
advises  people  to  refrain  from  purchasing  the 


AND  THE  SOCIAL  UPLIFT  167 

products  of  sweatshops,  when  a  score  of  clergy- 
men stand  ready  in  almost  every  community  to 
write  letters  and  articles  for  the  union  organs, 
when  throughout  the  country  on  Labor  Sunday 
from  almost  every  pulpit  a  labor  sermon  is 
preached — when  all  these  evidences  of  trade  union 
recognition  are  manifested  on  the  part  of  the 
clergy,  it  may  be  regarded  as  an  accepted  fact  that 
the  church  is  today  emphatically  on  the  side  of 
union  labor. 

Considering  how  serious  a  step  is  taken  by  de- 
liberative bodies  of  the  church  in  giving  formal 
approval  to  organizations  not  representative  of 
their  faith  in  each  instance,  the  recognition  given 
recently  by  such  bodies  to  trade  unionism  forms 
a  noteworthy  sign  of  the  times.  While  ordinarily 
the  question  of  resolutions  passed  in  conventions 
is  matter  to  be  glanced  at  as  perfunctory  expres- 
sion of  stereotyped  opinion,  in  this  case  of  the 
church  and  the  organized  wage  .earners  every 
word  of  each  resolution  possesses  a  peculiar  force 
in  significance.  Every  point  in  such  recommenda- 
tions, it  is  to  be  remembered,  was  well  weighed 
before  adoption,  every  phrase  subjected  to  criti- 
cism, and  the  step  taken  was  fraught  with  good 
or  baneful  results  for  the  convention,  or  synod, 
or  council  passing  the  resolutions.  Hence  it  is  not 
only  with  satisfaction  but  with  the  certainty  of 
placing  before  the  thoughtful  reader  an  appeal 
to  his  convictions  and  a  guide  to  his  future  atti- 


168  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

tude  on  the  labor  problem,  that  the  trade  union 
writer  assembles  the  subjoined  quotations. 

The  following  are  resolutions  adopted  at  the 
Tenth  Annual  Convention  of  the  American  Fed- 
eration of  Catholic  Societies,  1911 : 

"We  sympathize  with  every  legitimate  effort  to 
obtain  a  living  wage,  reasonable  hours,  protec- 
tion of  life  and  limb,  workingmen's  just  compen- 
sation, decent  and  healthful  conditions  in  the 
home,  shop,  mine,  and  factory  and  pledge  our 
support  to  all  legislative  action  instituted  to  this 
end. 

"We  give  our  hearty  endorsement  to  all  unions 
in  behalf  of  labor  which  are  based  on  Christian 
principles.  We  appeal  to  the  Christian  leaders 
and  membership  of  such  organizations  to  foster 
and  keep  intact  the  conservative  and  just  ideals 
for  which  trade  unionism  should  always  stand." 

The  Congregational  Brotherhood  of  America, 
through  its  Secretary  for  Labor  and  Social 
Service,  in  its  leaflet  ''The  Church,  Opportunity 
and  Resources  for  Social  Service,"  says: 

"A  strike  may  entail  suffering  upon  thousands 
of  people  and  untold  hardship  upon  a  whole  com- 
in unity,  but  there  are  conditions  far  worse  than 
those  caused  by  a  strike.  The  labor  union  repre- 
sents the  organized  effort  of  a  fine  set  of  men 
standing  for  principles  that  are  fundamental  to 
the  success  and  growth  of  our  free  institutions. 
The  church  ought  to  be  able  to  see  the  heroism 
that  will  lead  a  man  to  throw  down  his  tools  and 


AND  THE  SOCIAL  UPLIFT          169 

walk  out  of  the  shop,  taking  suffering  and  hard- 
ship for  himself  and  family  in  order  that  he  and 
his  fellow-worker  may  have  a  fair  wage,  reason- 
able hours  and  decent  conditions  in  the  shop." 

The  Episcopal  Church,  through  its  Association 
for  the  Advancement  of  Labor,  has  since  1887  been 
untiring  in  its  efforts  to  bring  together  church 
members  and  trade  unionists  in  promoting  many 
of  the  purposes  of  the  unions.  The  Methodist 
Church  South  has  taken  advanced  social  action 
against  child  labor.  The  Presbyterian  Church,  in 
its  Department  of  Church  and  Labor,  gives  full 
recognition  to  trade  union  work.  At  the  Roches- 
ter convention,  November  11-23,  1912,  clergymen 
were  present  as  fraternal  delegates  from  the  Fed- 
eral Council  of  the  Churches  of  Christ  in  America, 
the  American  Federation  of  Catholic  Societies, 
and  the  Church  Association  for  the  Advancement 
of  Labor.  In  attendance  at  the  weekly  or  monthly 
Central  Labor  Union  meetings  in  perhaps  a  score 
of  our  larger  cities  are  usually  ministers  of  sev- 
eral denominations. 

The  Federal  Council  of  the  Churches  of  Christ 
in  America  adopted  the  following  as  a  part 
of  a  general  statement  of  its  attitude  toward  social 
and  industrial  questions: 

"We  deem  it  the  duty  of  all  Christian  people 
to  concern  themselves  directly  with  certain  prac- 


170  THE  WAGE  EAENEBS 

tical  industrial  problems.  To  us  it  seems  that 
the  churches  must  stand — 

"For  equal  rights  and  complete  justice  for  all 
men  in  all  stations  of  life. 

' '  For  the  right  of  all  men  to  the  opportunity  for 
self-maintenance,  a  right  ever  to  be  wisely  and 
strongly  safeguarded  against  encroachments  of 
every  kind. 

''For  the  right  of  workers  to  some  protection 
against  the  hardships  often  resulting  from  the 
swift  crises  of  industrial  change. 

"For  the  principle  of  conciliation  and  arbitra- 
tion in  industrial  dissensions. 

"For  the  protection  of  the  worker  from  dan- 
gerous machinery,  occupational  disease,  injuries, 
and  mortality. 

1 '  For  the  abolition  of  child  labor. 

"For  such  regulation  of  the  conditions  of  toil 
for  women  as  shall  safeguard  the  physical  and 
moral  health  of  the  community. 

"For  the  suppression  of  the  sweating  system. 

"For  the  gradual  and  reasonable  reduction  of 
the  hours  of  labor  to  the  lowest  practicable  point, 
and  for  that  degree  of  leisure  for  all  which  is  a 
condition  of  the  highest  human  life. 

"For  a  release  from  employment  one  day  in 
seven. 

"For  a  living  wage  as  a  minimum  in  every 
industry,  and  for  the  highest  wage  that  each  in- 
dustry can  afford. 

"For  the  most  equitable  division  of  the  prod- 
ucts of  industry  that  can  ultimately  be  devised. 

"For  suitable  provision  for  the  old  age  of  the 
workers  and  for  those  incapacitated  by  injury. 

"For  the  abatement  of  poverty. 


AND  THE  SOCIAL  UPLIFT          171 

"To  the  toilers  of  America  and  to  those  who  by 
organized  effort  are  seeking  to  lift  the  crushing 
burdens  of  the  poor,  and  to  reduce  the  hardships 
and  uphold  the  dignity  of  labor,  this  council  sends 
the  greeting  of  human  brotherhood  and  the  pledge 
of  sympathy  and  of  help  in  a  cause  which  belongs 
to  all  who  follow  Christ." 

On  mentally  reviewing  the  hosts  of  sympa- 
thizers with  labor  organizations,  and  recalling 
numerous  instances  in  which  he  has  seen  men  and 
women  of  the  well-to-do  classes  persuaded  by  the 
justice  of  the  cause  of  organized  labor  to  become 
among  its  supporters,  the  union  representative 
may  utter  a  word  of  warning  to  every  opponent  of 
trade  unionism.  It  is,  if  you  would  remain  its 
enemy,  let  the  subject  alone.  It  is  dangerous  to 
you.  Some  day,  in  a  course  of  active  opposition 
to  the  unions,  you  will  surely  begin  to  think  your 
best  thoughts  and  feel  in  accordance  with  your 
best  manhood.  You  will  put  yourself  in  the 
unionist's  place,  see  economic  conditions  as  he 
sees  them,  and  appreciate  the  preponderating 
facts  in  his  life  which  have  carried  him  over  to 
his  labor  organization.  You  will  sympathize  with 
him,  recognize  the  necessity  of  his  work,  and  per- 
haps, as  with  the  churchmen  here  cited  before  you, 
join  in  his  praise. 


CHAPTER  XH. 

THE  WAGE  EARNERS  AND  THE  EMPLOYERS. 

The  typical  American  employer,  in  exercising 
the  common  sense  and  business  sagacity  required 
in  successful  management  and  in  achieving  a 
desired  reputation  for  fair-mindedness,  avoids 
placing  himself  among  those  disputatious  irrecon- 
cilables,  the  exceptions  in  his  class,  who  refuse  to 
recognize  that  their  extreme  anti-union  views  are 
out  of  date.  Consequently,  as  the  organization  of 
labor  has  developed  in  this  country,  the  bulk  of  the 
employers  in  one  occupation  after  another  have 
openly  accepted  the  trade  union  as  one  of  the  in- 
evitable modern  institutions — one  which  is  an  out- 
come of  the  new  industrial  conditions,  a  necessary 
refuge  and  creation  of  the  wage  workers,  a  legiti- 
mate order  and  body  within  our  Republic,  cover- 
ing a  social  territory  lying  beyond  the  dictator- 
ship of  employing  capital.  The  closing  of  that 
period  in  our  industrial  history  in  which  the  trade 
unions  might  possibly  have  been  regarded  by  con- 
servative employers  as  yet  awaiting  honorable 
standing  with  other  recognized  beneficent  institu- 
tions, ought  to  have  been  regarded  by  even  them 
as  arrived  at  the  day  that  President  Taft  said: 
"Time  was  when  everybody  who  employed  labor 
was  opposed  to  the  labor  union;  when  it  was  re- 


AND  THE  EMPLOYERS  173 

garded  as  a  menace.  That  time,  I  am  glad  to  say, 
has  largely  passed  away,  and  the  man  today  who 
objects  to  the  orgnization  of  labor  should  be  rele- 
gated to  the  last  century." 

Granted,  President  Taft  did  not  explicitly  set 
the  seal  of  his  approval  on  every  feature  that  the 
trade  union  regards  as  essential  to  its  functions. 
Nor  do  employers  who  recognize  organized  labor 
uniformly  acquiesce  with  good  grace  in  every 
union  regulation,  but  taking  broad  views  of  life 
and  of  the  perplexities  in  the  general  industrial 
situation,  they  have  learned  that  on  the  whole  the 
union  brings  both  to  the  employing  and  the  work- 
ing classes,  as  well  as  to  the  nation,  results  im- 
measurably better  than  the  chaos  of  the  labor 
market,  the  defenselessness  of  the  wage  workers, 
and  the  silencing  of  the  voice  of  oppressed  labor, 
where  the  masses  are  unorganized. 

Granted,  also,  that  in  general  the  industrial 
peace  which  exists  between  organized  wage 
workers  and  their  employers  is  recognized  by  both 
sides  as  really  a  phase  of  economic  conflict;  it  is 
a  truce,  possible  of  indefinite  duration,  in  which 
each  has  learned  to  respect  the  other.  On  both 
sides  are  men.  Neither  knows  despot  or  serf. 
Both  are  included,  to  the  extent  of  their  trade 
contracts,  in  a  wage-market  democracy.  The 
mutual  attitude  is  far  from  indicating  social  ill- 
health.  Both  sides  gain  in  the  discipline  conse- 
quent on  learning  through  strife  the  wisdom  of 


174  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

conciliation,  on  seeing  facts  as  shown  on  the  other 
side  of  the  shield,  and  on  hearkening  on  occasions 
to  warnings  in  public  opinion.  The  mental  horizon 
of  both  employer  and  employe,  in  that  situation 
becomes  sufficiently  wide  to  permit  of  a  clear 
survey  of  all  the  body  of  facts  for  and  against 
either  party.  The  organized  wage  earners  and 
the  organized  employers  may  agree  upon  regard- 
ing each  other  as  on  different  sides  of  the  labor 
market,  even,  to  an  extent,  as  rivals  in  dividing 
the  wealth  they  together  produce,  but  they  may 
yet  have  wisdom  enough  to  stop  short  of  declar- 
ing each  other  social  enemies  and  showing  them- 
selves animated  with  the  bitterness  of  a  mutual 
hate  or  bent  on  exterminating  each  other's  organ- 
izations. 

Not  in  a  spirit  of  rancor  and  recrimination 
would  a  congress  of  American  employers  and 
employes  meet  today  if  it  were  truly  representa- 
tive— if,  for  example,  it  were  composed  of  one 
wage-earning  delegate  from  each  of  the  railroad 
brotherhoods  and  one  employer  delegate  from 
among  the  railroad  managers  closest  to  each  of 
these,  and  also  one  delegate  from  each  of  the  113 
international  unions  in  the  American  Federation 
of  Labor  and  one  from  the  employers  of  each  cor- 
responding occupation.  Such  a  congress  might 
reasonably  be  expected  to  exhibit  to  the  world  a 
wealth  of  instructive  experience,  a  healthy  breadth 
of  view  and  manly  toleration,  a  habit  of  self-con- 


AND  THE  EMPLOYERS  175 

trol,  a  desire  for  a  clear  understanding  of  the 
differences  in  principle  between  the  two  great 
human  elements  in  industry.  In  the  course  of  the 
proceedings  of  such  a  deliberative  body,  it  is  cer- 
tain, the  labor  delegates  would  act  under  a  sense 
of  their  grave  responsibilities,  while  the  ex- 
tremists among  the  employers  would  be  obliged, 
through  the  prevailing  opinion  in  their  own  num- 
bers, it  can  be  believed,  to  drop  from  their  case 
against  unionism  the  sort  of  arguments  certain 
radical  attorneys  and  hasty-tempered  officials  who 
speak  for  the  few  belated  and  contentious  employ- 
ers'  associations  nowadays  rely  upon  to  mislead 
the  public. 

What  the  latter  can  be  truthfully  charged  with 
is  narrowness,  exaggeration  in  statement,  lack  of 
candor  in  argument,  impracticability,  and,  withal, 
shortsightedness.  They  ignore,  or  at  least  give 
slight  weight  to,  the  fundamental  economic  causes 
for  trade  union  principles  and  organization.  They 
"harp  on  one  string, "  presenting  repeatedly  in 
various  forms  their  one  set  of  partisan  pleadings 
as  if  they  thereby  exhausted  the  whole  subject  at 
issue.  Their  task  of  trying  to  demolish  the  unions 
they  carry  on  in  terms  of  heat  and  hate,  which 
usually  betray  misrepresentation.  But,  worse  for 
them  as  business  men,  they  fail  to  win  their  case 
before  the  public  and  they  lose  in  their  fight  on 
unionism. 

Suppose  that  before  a  congress  such  as  that 


176  THE  WAGE  EABNERS 

we  have  imagined  a  labor  delegate  were  to  make 
against  one  of  the  employers  present  the  charges 
contained  in  the  preceding  paragraph.  Could  he 
substantiate  them!  Suppose  he  were  to  make 
them  against  Mr.  John  Kirby,  Jr.,  president  of 
the  National  Association  of  Manufacturers. 

To  begin,  Mr.  Kirby  has  signally  failed  to  defeat 
American  unionism,  which  surely  has  been  his 
purpose  other  than  filling  the  air  with  plaint  and 
denunciation.  In  one  of  his  leaflets  he  expresses 
his  desire  to  see  the  American  Federation  of 
Labor  "as  dead  as  a  mackerel."  In  his  inaugural 
address  in  1909  he  said :  * '  Today  the  life  of  the 
American  Federation  of  Labor  is  hanging  by  a 
thread."  But  the  report  of  the  secretary  of  the 
Federation  for  each  year  since  that  time  shows  an 
unprecedented  increase  in  the  paid-up  member- 
ship, the  total  for  1912 — the  largest  yet  reached — 
being  1,841,000.  As  an  Irish  delegate  at  a  recent 
convention  of  the  American  Federation  of  Labor 
well  said,  Mr.  Kirby 's  effort  to  disrupt  the  trade 
union  movement  was  like  the  attempt  to  destroy 
the  shamrocks  of  the  Emerald  Isle — the  faster  you 
plucked  them  the  thicker  they  grew. 

In  another  leaflet  Mr.  Kirby  announces:  "Why 
even  the  Canadian  unions  have  repudiated  the 
methods  of  the  American  Federation  of  Labor," 
quoting,  in  confirmation,  a  "Grand  Council  of 
Provincial  Workingmen"  as  deciding  "in  favor 
of  cutting  loose."  But  at  the  recent  convention, 


AND  THE  EMPLOYEES  177 

as  usual,  Canada  was  fully  represented,  its  dele- 
gates reporting  unquestioned  loyalty  to  the  inter- 
national body.  In  other  leaflets  Mr.  Kirby  refers 
to  the  Buck's  Stove  and  Range  Co.'s  contest  with 
union  labor  as  if  it  were  to  be  as  uncompromising 
as  his  own.  But  the  company  is  today  on  friendly 
terms  with  all  the  unions.  He  mentions  approv- 
ingly a  recent  attack  by  "the  Knights  of  Labor" 
on  the  American  Federation  of  Labor.  But  at  this 
showing  of  how  hard  pressed  he  must  be  for  argu- 
ments, trade  unionists  merely  smile  and  ask  where 
those  Knights  are  to  be  found.  In  another  of  Mr. 
Kirby  Js  leaflets,  which  contains  his  address  on 
taking  the  presidency  of  the  Manufacturers'  As- 
sociation in  1909,  he  quotes  a  magazine  in  calling 
attention  to  the  fact  that  in  1906  and  1907  the 
International  Typographical  Union  spent  three 
million  dollars  on  its  eight-hour  strike,  the  article 
saying:  "They  lost  ground"  in  the  first  of  these 
two  years  and  in  the  second  * '  threw  into  the  same 
whirlpool,"  "with  a  dogged  tenacity  of  a  man 
who  does  not  know  he  is  defeated,"  the  sum  so 
expended.  But  that  eight-hour  strike  was  com- 
pletely won.  When  it  began  the  International 
Typographical  Union  had  46,000  members ;  it  has 
now  54,700.  These  have  gotten  back  in  increased 
wages  since  the  strike  was  closed  all  the  sums  it 
cost  the  union,  several  times  over,  besides  enjoy- 
ing the  marked  reduction  of  the  workday.  In  most 
of  his  leaflets  Mr.  Kirby,  in  unmeasured  terms, 


178  THE  WAGE  EARNERS 

attacks  the  National  Civic  Federation.  But  that 
organization  gives  no  indication  of  being  enfeebled 
thereby.  Mr.  Kirby  in  an  address  took  the  side 
of  the  employers  against  the  shirt-waist  strikers, 
citing  with  approval  the  dictum,  ' '  The  Waist  and 
Dress  Manufacturers  will  never  sign  any  union 
agreements."  But  they  did,  the  last  one  among 
them.  Mr.  Kirby  seems  to  regard  his  favorite 
assertion  relative  to  the  proportion  of  union  wage- 
workers  to  all  the  workers  of  this  country  as  one 
of  his  strongest  points,  for  he  prints  it  at  least  a 
score  of  times  in  his  addresses  and  leaflets.  In  his 
"Goal  of  the  Labor  Trust"  he  puts  his  figures 
thus:  "The  fact  that  a  paltry  3y2  per  cent,  of 
the  workingmen  of  this  country,  embracing  the 
militant,  discordant,  and  disturbing  element  of 
society,  should  be  permitted  to  dominate  over  in- 
dustrial and  commercial  affairs  as  they  have  done, 
is  a  disgrace  to  American  business  men  and  to 
American  manhood."  But  where  is  the  industrial 
employer  who  is  making  believe  that  he  has  access 
to  a  labor  market  in  which,  as  Mr.  Kirby  else- 
where puts  his  proposition,  "3l/2  per  cent,  of  the 
workers"  "coerce,  intimidate,  and  brutally  perse- 
cute the  other  96y2  per  cent?"  Mr.  Kirby 's  state- 
ments of  this  kind — typical  of  the  premises  on 
which  he  makes  his  usual  absurd  deductions — 
could  not  arouse  any  interest  among  the  employ- 
ers in  the  congress  we  have  imagined,  practical 
men  as  they  would  be.  The  bituminous  mine  oper- 


AND  THE  EMPLOYEES  179 

ators  present  would  know  full  well  that  the  pro- 
portion of  union  miners  runs  from  60  to  75  per 
cent,  of  the  whole  number;  and  the  employing 
printers  that  more  than  90  per  cent,  of  the  avail- 
able and  competent  compositors  are  union;  even 
the  waist  and  skirt  manufacturers,  in  proper  sea- 
son, are  made  aware  that  not  even  3y2  per  cent, 
of  their  employes  are  then  non-union.  Mr.  Kirby 
would  in  vain  point  out  to  his  fellow-employer 
delegates  at  the  congress  the  millions  of  domestic 
servants,  farm  laborers,  office  clerks,  and  unorgan- 
ized casual  workers  as  playing  any  part  in  the  in- 
dustrial market  in  which  they  are  commonly  in- 
terested in  obtaining  their  skilled  employes.  On 
these  classes  of  workers  the  employers  do  not 
bestow  a  glance  when  choosing  between  union  and 
non-union  men,  each  for  his  particular  industry. 
The  momentous  fact  to  industrial  employers  is 
that  the  unions  master  their  respective  divisions 
of  the  labor  market  and  hold  the  labor  in  them  on 
sale  collectively.  The  unionists  also  speak  for 
the  non-unionists,  who  are  unable  to  voice  their 
own  demands,  either  before  the  public,  the  legis- 
lative bodies,  or  the  employers. 

A  minor  point  in  the  estimate  of  delegates  to  a 
mixed  congress  discussing  economics,  and  yet  a 
matter  of  some  consideration  among  American 
gentlemen,  might  be  made  against  Mr.  Kirby 
should  a  labor  delegate  quote  specimens  of  the 
billingsgate  he  habitually  employs  in  his  peppery 


180  THE  WAGE  EAENEES 

"literature";  "Loud-mouthed  agitator  and 
preacher  of  discontent";  "yelpings  of  such  men"; 
"labor  demagogue";  "captured  the  Civic  Feder- 
ation, body,  boots  and  breeches";  "no  organiza- 
tion of  men,  not  excepting  the  Ku-Klux-Klan,  the 
Mafia,  or  the  Black  Hand  Society,  has  ever  pro 
duced  such  a  record  of  barbarism";  "fake  union 
promoters";  "sinister  threatenings  of  the  labor 
trust";  "gab-fests";  "a  fine  bunch  of  reform- 
ers"; "a  reverend  demagogue"  (Mr.  Stelzle). 
It  was  such  phraseology  that  brought  from  Presi- 
dent-Emeritus Eliot  of  Harvard  the  suggestion, 
"Your  words  would  carry  greater  weight  with  the 
American  people  if  they  were  somewhat  less 
intense. ' ' 

Mr.  Kirby  would  be  asked  to  give  names  at 
once  were  he  to  assert  before  the  congress  we 
have  imagined,  what  he  has  printed  repeatedly  in 
his  association's  leaflets,  that  "a  man  prominent 
in  labor  circles,"  said  to  him:  "A  labor  union 
without  violence  is  a  joke,"  and  that  "a  PresL 
dent  of  a  labor  union"  said  to  him:  "The  only 
way  to  make  a  boss  give  us  what  we  want  is  to  tie 
him  up  in  knots  and  beat  hell  out  of  the  scabs 
who  work  for  him."  He  would  also  be  compelled 
to  face  the  challenge  of  Samuel  Gompers  to  pro- 
duce his  proofs  should  he  repeat  his  quotation 
attributing  to  Mr.  Gompers  the  declaration  on  one 
occasion  that  he  "is  the  master  of  a  million 
minds."  Mr.  Kirby  could  also  be  set  right,  on 


AND  THE  EMPLOYERS  181 

the  spot,  were  he  to  say,  as  in  his  leaflets,  that, 
"John  Mitchell  has  expressed  in  the  strongest 
language  his  contempt  for  the  decisions  of  the 
courts  and  his  refusal  to  obey  them,"  and  that 
"Gompers,  Mitchell  and  Morrison  have  openly 
defied  the  authority"  of  "the  supreme  judicial 
tribunal."  As  all  men  may  know,  the  basis  of 
these  last  assertions  is  the  fact  that  organized 
labor  has  asked  for  a  decision  by  the  highest 
court  on  certain  decrees  of  a  lower  court,  which 
may  be  in  error.  But  all  such  talk  by  Mr.  Kirby 
is  recognized  as  mere  campaign  perversion  and 
distortion. 

Mr.  Kirby 's  spirit,  the  tone  of  his  utterances, 
his  manner  in  expressing  himself,  and  the  plane 
of  his  argument,  all  would  fail  to  awaken  favor- 
able response  in  a  gathering  of  serious  men  repre- 
sentative of  the  two  classes  most  closely  interested 
in  the  social  problems  he  has  set  out  to  solve  in 
his  fiery  and  dogmatic  way.  These  men  could  not 
accept  Mr.  Kirby 's  presentation  of  the  economic 
question  of  trade  unionism  as  either  correct  or 
adequate.  The  traditional  methods  of  blind  par- 
tisanship— which,  chiefly,  are  to  minimize  the 
discussion  of  principles,  to  avoid,  if  possible, 
agreement  between  disputants  as  to  the  funda- 
mental points  at  issue,  and  with  wrath  and  fury 
to  make  the  most  of  any  weaknesses  which  may 
with  even  faint  color  of  truth  be  fastened  upon  to 
discredit  the  other  side — these  are  Mr.  Kirby 's 


182  THE  WAGE  EAENEBS 

sole  methods.  Fair-minded  and  intelligent  repre- 
sentatives of  his  own  class,  acting  under  obliga- 
tions to  their  country,  indeed,  to  civilized  society, 
would  promptly  see  through  his  tricks  of  putting 
his  adversaries  in  a  false  position,  discount,  his 
assertions,  take  his  measure  as  an  unfair  pleader 
and  a  poor  prophet  and  look  elsewhere  for  a 
worthy  champion.  Indeed,  in  the  actual  course  of 
events,  that  is  what  has  taken  place. 

What,  justly  and  logically,  is  the  order  of  argu- 
ment on  the  question  of  the  trade  union? 

Trade  unionism  is  a  natural  consequence  of  the 
social  conditions  resulting  from  competition 
between  wage-workers  for  employment.  That  is 
the  primary,  the  basic,  the  comprehensive  fact 
to  be  considered  by  every  assemblage,  every 
economic  observer,  every  contestant  on  either 
side,  when  considering  the  question  of  organized 
labor.  There  is  no  other  equally  illuminating 
initial  point  for  a  discussion  of  the  wage  problem. 
That  this  is  true  is  accepted  as  an  indisputable 
commonplace  wherever  men  of  affairs  face  men 
of  labor  in  arranging  terms  for  labor  in  the 
market. 

Mr.  Kirby's  solution  of  the  problem  is  that 
there  must  be  no  "interference  with  the  natural 
law  of  supply  and  demand."  He  would  have  the 
sellers  of  labor  ever  at  the  mercy  of  buyers, 
whereas  the  trade  union  would  put  sellers  on  an 
equal  footing  with  the  buyers.  The  depths  of 


AND  THE  EMPLOYEES  183 

deprivation  and  despair  to  which  the  mass  of 
wage  earners  may  be  carried  by  unrestricted  com- 
petition among  themselves  for  the  boon  of  work 
lias  been  illustrated  the  world  over,  times  without 
number.  The  competing  laborers  have  been  tan- 
talized with  a  vicious  circle  of  inapplicable  or  self- 
destructive  palliatives  for  the  persistent  fact  of 
general  competition  and  its  baneful  effects.  "Be 
thrifty"  is  a  useless  injunction  either  to  the  wage 
earners  out  of  work  or  to  those  whose  gains  at 
best  fail  to  secure  the  standard  of  living  of  civil- 
ized beings.  " Be  competent. "  "Be  loyal  to  your 
employers."  "Be  quiet."  "Distrust  agitators." 
All  such  admonitions  have  everywhere  been 
listened  to  and  followed  by  well-meaning,  confid- 
ing, upright,  industrious  laborers,  to  find  at  last 
that  while  each  in  certain  conditions  may  have  its 
place  in  prudent  conduct  or  wise  self-guidance,  all 
together — as  in  the  case  of  the  industrious, 
patient,  self-denying,  but  starving  sewing  women 
— count  for  little  in  an  overstocked  wage  market. 
When  is  the  wage  market  overstocked!  The 
answer  is:  Whenever  a  wage  worker 's  employer 
can  tell  him  to  be  off  if  dissatisfied,  there's  another 
man  waiting  for  his  job.  That  fact  makes  the 
employer  the  master.  No  individual  in  the  mass 
of  laborers  can  stand  up  for  his  own  terms  in 
employment  when  another,  his  equal,  or  anything 
like  it,  will  accept  lower  terms.  Moreover,  the 
employer  himself,  whatever  his  just  or  generous 


184  THE  WAGE  EAENEES 

inclinations,  is  made  to  bend  to  the  law  of  com- 
petition in  labor  when  his  rival  reduces  the  cost 
of  production  through  working  his  employes 
longer  hours  than  he  would  exact  or  for  smaller 
wages  than  he  would  wish  to  pay. 

Who  does  not  know  these  truths'?  Who  cannot 
see  that  in  respect  to  the  actual  contact  between 
the  buyers  and  sellers  of  labor  they  are  all-inclu- 
sive? Who  has  not  seen  them  exemplified  on  a 
small  scale  as  between  two  village  shops  or  on  a 
vast  scale  in  mine,  or  iron-works,  or  railroad, 
employing  thousands  of  workmen!  Who  does 
not  know  that  they  have  formed  the  riddle  of 
economists,  the  vexation  of  philanthropists,  the 
problem  of  problems  for  statesmen,  the  torture  of 
toilsome  wage  workers,  the  bases  for  the  menace 
of  social  revolution? 

Trade  unionists  every  day  overcome  Mr. 
Kirby's  " natural  law  of  supply  and  demand"  by 
a  method  equally  natural.  They  refuse  to  sell 
their  labor  in  competition.  From  the  proposition 
that  they  shall  not  do  so  flow  as  corollaries  the 
regulations  by  which  the  unionists  forestall  the 
buyers'  methods  of  over-stocking  or  undermining 
the  labor  market.  They  justify  their  rules  by  the 
necessity  of  self-preservation  for  their  union. 
Their  organization  is  the  instrument  indispensable 
in  attaining  their  purpose — a  welfare  of  the  work- 
ing classes  impossible  in  a  state  of  competition. 

No  congress  of  employers  and  employed,  if 


AND  THE  EMPLOYERS  185 

honestly  setting  out  to  face  truth  germane  to  their 
object,  could  possibly  avoid  debating  this  main 
principle  of  the  labor  question.  They  could  never 
get  away  from  it  unanswered.  All  other  phases 
of  the  subject  are  subsidiary  to  it.  The  character 
of  the  men  in  the  labor  movement,  or  of  the  men 
ambitious  to  be  the  champions  among  organized 
labor's  enemies,  is  not  pertinent  to  it.  In  a  par- 
liament studying  the  labor  problem,  economics 
coming  separately  and  first,  the  enforced  com- 
petition of  laborers  must  be  the  overshadowing 
matter  for  consideration.  But  Mr.  Kirby  and  his 
kind  ignore  it. 

Why  Mr.  Kirby  is  conducting  a  losing  fight  is 
plainly  to  be  seen.  He  has  not  won  with  the 
working  classes,  for  the  reason  that  all  his  argu- 
ments, when  they  come  to  the  testing  point,  are 
but  arguments  for  the  restoration  of  competition 
in  the  labor  market,  and  that  condition  is  intol- 
erable because  destructive  to  the  workers.  He  has 
not  won  with  the  employing  classes,  for  several 
reasons.  The  wise  and  experienced  among  them, 
equally  with  the  union  men,  regard  the  drift  of 
his  talk — has  he  any  doctrines? — as  antiquated, 
impractical,  detrimental  to  society.  A  large  pro- 
portion of  them  do  not  share  his  feelings  of  misery 
and  pain  when  judging  of  the  outcome  of  unionism. 
On  the  contrary,  they  pronounce  for  the  unions. 
They  would  rather  go  with  the  union's  sympa- 
thizers— the  churches,  the  women's  clubs,  the  law- 


186  THE  WAGE  EAENEBS 

makers,  the  organizations  that  strive  for  indus- 
trial agreement,  all  of  which,  in  their  turn, 
Mr.  Kirby  has  rabidly  denounced — than  the  way 
Mr.  Kirby  has  chosen,  the  way  of  ceaseless  con- 
flict, hard  feeling,  hysterical  lamentation,  and 
foredoomed  defeat. 


HD 


THE  LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
Santa  Barbara 


STACK  COLLECTION 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW. 


10m-10,'63(E1188s4)476D 


000  720  829     1 


